Natasha Richardson dies after fall on ski slope
NEW YORK Natasha Richardson, a gifted and precocious heiress to acting royalty whose career highlights included the film "Patty Hearst" and a Tony-winning performance in a stage revival of "Cabaret," died Wednesday at age 45 after suffering a head injury during a beginners' ski lesson.
Alan Nierob, the Los Angeles-based publicist for Richardson's husband Liam Neeson, confirmed her death in a written statement.
"Liam Neeson, his sons (Micheal, 13, and 12-year-old Daniel), and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha," the statement said. "They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time."
The statement did not give details on the cause of death for Richardson, who suffered a head injury and fell on a beginner's trail during a private ski lesson at the luxury Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec. Seemingly fine after the fall, about an hour later she complained that she didn't feel well.
She was hospitalized Tuesday in Montreal and later flown to a hospital in New York, where family members had been seen coming and going.
Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson's mother, arrived in a car with darkened windows and was taken through a garage when she arrived at the Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan's Upper East Side about 5 p.m. Wednesday. An hour earlier, Richardson's sister, Joely, arrived alone and was swarmed by the media as she entered through the back of the hospital.
It was a sudden and horrifying loss for her family and friends, for the film and theater communities, for her many fans and for both her native and adoptive countries. Descended from at least three generations of actors, Richardson was a proper Londoner who came to love the noise of New York, an elegant blonde with large, lively eyes, a bright smile and a hearty laugh.
If she never quite attained the acting heights of her Academy Award-winning mother, she still had enjoyed a long and worthy career. As an actress, Richardson was equally adept at passion and restraint, able to portray besieged women both confessional (Tennessee Williams' Blanche DuBois) and confined (the concubine in the futuristic horror of "The Handmaid's Tale").
Like other family members, she divided her time between stage and screen. On Broadway, she won a Tony for her performance as Sally Bowles in a 1998 revival of "Cabaret." She also appeared in New York in a production of Patrick Marber's "Closer" (1999) as well as 2005 revival of Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," in which she played Blanche opposite John C. Reilly's Stanley Kowalski.
She met Neeson when they made their Broadway debuts in 1993, co-starring in "Anna Christie," Eugene O'Neill's drama about a former prostitute and the sailor who falls in love with her.
"The astonishing Natasha Richardson ... gives what may prove to be the performance of the season as Anna, turning a heroine who has long been portrayed (and reviled) as a whore with a heart of gold into a tough, ruthlessly unsentimental apostle of O'Neill's tragic understanding of life," The New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote. "Miss Richardson, seeming more like a youthful incarnation of her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, than she has before, is riveting from her first entrance through a saloon doorway's ethereal shaft of golden light."
Her most notable film roles came earlier in her career. Richardson played the title character in Paul Schrader's "Patty Hearst," a 1988 biopic about the kidnapped heiress for which the actress became so immersed that even between scenes she wore a blindfold, the better to identify with her real-life counterpart.
"Natasha Richardson ... has been handed a big unwritten role; she feels her way into it, and she fills it," wrote The New Yorker's Pauline Kael. "We feel how alone and paralyzed Patty is she retreats into being a hidden observer."
Richardson was directed again by Schrader in a 1990 adaptation of Ian McEwan's "The Comfort of Strangers" and, also in 1990, starred in the screen version of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."
She later co-starred with Neeson in "Nell," with Mia Farrow in "Widow's Peak" and with a pre-teen Lindsay Lohan in a remake of "The Parent Trap." More recent movies, none of them widely seen, included "Wild Child," "Evening" and "Asylum."
She was born in London in 1963, the performing gene inherited not just from her parents (Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson), but from her maternal grandparents (Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson), an aunt (Lynn Redgrave) and an uncle (Corin Redgrave). Her younger sister, Joely Richardson, also joined the family business.
Friends and family members remembered Natasha as an unusually poised child, perhaps forced to grow up early when her father left her mother in the late '60s for Jeanne Moreau. (Tony Richardson died in 1991).
Interviewed by The Associated Press in 2001, Natasha Richardson said she related well to her family if only because, "We've all been through it in one way or another and so we've had to be strong. Also we embrace life. We are not cynical about life."
Richardson always planned to act, apart from one brief childhood moment when she wanted to be a flight attendant "wonderful irony now since I hate to fly and have to take a pill in order to get on a plane. I'm so terrified."
Her screen debut came at age 4 when she appeared as a flower girl in "The Charge of the Light Brigade," directed by her father, whose movies included "Tom Jones" and "The Entertainer." The show business wand had already tapped her the year before, when she saw her mother in the 1967 film version of the Broadway show "Camelot."
"She was so beautiful. I still look at that movie and I can't believe it. It still makes me cry, the beauty of it. I could go on and on in that white fur hooded thing, when she comes through the forest for the first time. You've never seen anything so beautiful!" Richardson said.
She studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and was an experienced stage actress by her early 20s, appearing in "On the Razzle," "Charley's Aunt" and "The Seagull," for which the London Drama Critics awarded her most promising newcomer.
Although she never shared her mother's fiercely expressed political views, they were close professionally and acted together, most recently on Broadway to play the roles of mother and daughter in a one-night benefit concert version of "A Little Night Music," the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical.
Before meeting up with Neeson (who called her "Tash") Richardson was married to theater and producer Robert Fox, whose credits include the 1985 staging of "The Seagull" in which his future wife appeared.
She sometimes remarked on the differences between her and her second husband she from a theatrical dynasty and he from a working-class background in Northern Ireland.
"He's more laid back, happy to see what happens, whereas I'm a doer and I plan ahead," Richardson told The Independent on Sunday newspaper in 2003. "The differences sometimes get in the way but they can be the very things that feed a marriage, too."
She once said that Neeson's serious injury in a 2000 motorcycle accident he suffered a crushed pelvis after colliding with a deer in upstate New York had made her really appreciate life.
"I wake up every morning feeling lucky which is driven by fear, no doubt, since I know it could all go away," she told The Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2003.
Terry Fox tops torch choices
VANCOUVER, B.C. - A new survey suggests cancer crusader Terry Fox garners more support than living heroes for a spot in the 2010 Olympic torch relay.
The Ipsos survey, done for torch relay sponsor RBC, suggests 44 per cent of Canadians would like to hand the Olympic flame off to Fox. The next most popular choice was Wayne Gretzky.
The online survey asked more than 1,000 people to pick from a list of 24 the person they'd most like to pass the Olympic flame to.
Of the top 15, eight are dead, including former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Oscar Peterson, Tommy Douglas and Rene Levesque.
Living Canadians on the list included Celine Dion, Gordie Howe and former Olympian Nancy Greene.
Twelve thousand people will have the chance to carry the 2010 torch, about half of them members of the public selected through contests run by RBC and Coca-Cola. The Ipsos survey has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Brad Pitt, Natalie Portman find 'Important Artifacts'
Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman want you to buy what they're sellin'.
Pitt and Portman have signed on for the adaptation of Leanne Sharpton's (deep breath) "Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry," according to Variety. The transition from Sharpton's novel to the big screen should be interesting, to say the least: "Important Artifacts" reveals the characters not through narrative but via a mock auction catalog, leaving readers to explore the relationship based on the items for sale and their descriptions.
Instead, Variety says the film will be a romantic comedy with Pitt and Portman in the title roles.
Pitt, 45, will co-star this year in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds." Portman, 27, last starred opposite Scarlett Johansson in "The Other Boleyn Girl."
Source: Natasha Richardson Off Life Support
Natasha Richardson has been taken off life support.
Sources close to the family tell E! News that the Tony Award winner was brain dead by the time she arrived in New York Tuesday night. Earlier today, the family made the wrenching call to remove her from respirators.
Accompanied by husband Liam Neeson, the 45-year-old Richardson was flown to Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan Tuesday, a day after injuring her head in a skiing accident in Montreal.
Sincer her arrival, Neeson and the couple's two sons had been keeping vigil. Also paying visits were members of Richardson's family, including her mother, Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave, sister Joely Richardson and aunt Lynn Redgrave.
Its particularly tragic for Vanessa, laments a Richardson confidante, because she just finished playing a woman who loses her daughter in The Year of Magical Thinking, and now she has to endure it all over again.
Springsteen leads Seeger 90th birthday tribute
NEW YORK (Billboard) Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, Eddie Vedder, John Mellencamp and Emmylou Harris are among the dozens of musicians who will celebrate American folk music legend Pete Seeger's 90th birthday with a gala concert at Madison Square Garden on May 3.
The event, dubbed "The Clearwater Concert: Creating the Next Generation of Environmental Leaders," will raise funds and awareness for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, an environmental organization founded by Seeger in the 1960s to preserve and protect the Hudson River.
Other artists scheduled to appear include Steve Earle, Joan Baez, Juanes, Richie Havens, Kris Kirstofferson, Tom Morello, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti and Ben Harper.
Celebrations honoring Seeger's musical legacy and social activism will go on throughout the year. The Madison Square Garden birthday concert is part of a series of 90th birthday events benefiting Clearwater, which is also marking its 40th anniversary.
Wilco's Jeff Tweedy will play a rare acoustic solo set at Clearwater's annual "Spring Splash" fundraiser in Beacon, N.Y., on March 28. Tweedy and Seeger will perform together at the sold-out event.
Blues singer Susan Tedeschi, folk hero Arlo Guthrie, "newgrass" sensations Old Crow Medicine Show and Alejandro Escovedo are some of the artists headlining the annual Clearwater Festival in Croton, N.Y., on June 20-21. The Persuasions, indie favorites Dr. Dog and Elvis Perkins in Dearland, New Pornographers frontman A.C. Newman, and Allison Moorer are among the dozens of other performers announced Wednesday on the festival's website (http://www.clearwater.org/festival/performers.html).
Seeger will be performing numerous times during the two-day festival, and his grandson (and frequent collaborator) Tao Rodriguez-Seeger will also play a set with his band.
All of the money raised at the events support Clearwater's environmental research, education and advocacy efforts to help preserve and protect the Hudson River.
American Express pre-sale tickets for the Madison Square Garden concert will be available starting March 23, and sales to the general public begin March 30. More information can be found at www.Seeger90.com (http://www.Seeger90.com).
Asked last year by Billboard what his legacy will be, Seeger replied, "My family will remember me, and a few others. I'm one of a lot of songwriters. There'll be more important things to think about."
Madonna to record new tracks for hits collection
LOS ANGELES (Billboard) Madonna plans to head back into the studio to record new music for an upcoming greatest hits album, tentatively due in September.
Details on the project -- which will be her last album for Warner Bros. Records -- are not yet final, according to Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's longtime publicist. But she said that "all different options are being explored regarding packaging and content."
One of those options might involve input from Madonna's fans on which tunes should be included on the album. Guy Oseary, the singer's manager, has posted missives to his Twitter account, soliciting suggestions from Madonna's devotees about which tracks "must be on" the album.
Madonna has released two previous best-ofs: 1990's "The Immaculate Collection" and 2001's "GHV2: Greatest Hits Volume 2." She also issued the ballads collection, "Something To Remember," in 1995. "Immaculate" is tied with Patsy Cline's "Greatest Hits" as the top-selling hits albums ever by a solo female in the U.S. -- both are certified at 10 million sold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
In 2007, Madonna signed a long-term, all-encompassing deal with Live Nation. Her last album owed to Warner Bros. is the forthcoming hits package.
Madonna signed to the Warner Bros. Records label Sire in 1982 and released her first single, "Everybody," that year. Her self-titled debut album bowed in 1983.
Her most recent set, 2008's "Hard Candy," debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 280,000. It has sold 714,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Salma Hayek back acting in Adam Sandler comedy
LOS ANGELES (AFP) Actress Salma Hayek will return to movie screens in a comedy alongside Adam Sandler, after a break in which she was producing and acting for television, Hollywood media reported Wednesday.
Hayek joins funnyman Sandler and his fellow former "Saturday Night Live" stars Chris Rock, Rob Schneider and David Spade in a comedy about best friends from high school who reunite 30 years later, according to Variety.
The 42-year-old star of "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and "Traffic" has been devoting time to producing the US TV series "Ugly Betty" and guest-starring in the Golden Globe-winning "30 Rock."
Sandler co-wrote the new project and his "Happy Gilmore" director Dennis Dugan is onboard, said the Hollywood press. It will start shooting in the coming months, ready for release in 2010.
Hayek wed French businessman Francois-Henri Pinault last month in Paris. The couple have an infant daughter together.
She became famous after starring in a telenovela in her native Mexico when she was 22 years old, before moving to Hollywood.
Hayek has also starred in the action flicks "Desperado" and "Wild Wild West" and appeared in "Dogma." Her role as the eccentric Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in the film "Frida" earned Hayek a best actress nomination at the 2003 Oscars.
After Dora uproar, Nick and Mattel soothe moms
NEW YORK When toy maker Mattel, working with Nickelodeon, announced earlier this month that a "tween" version of Nick's beloved "Dora the Explorer" cartoon character would be unveiled in the fall, the response was overwhelming ... overwhelmingly negative.
Dora the streetwalker. A sexed-up version of a children's icon. A poor example for kids.
Those were just some of the terms tossed around the blogosphere after Mattel released a silhouette of the "new" Dora, whose image was drastically changed from the endearing tomboy look Dora fans grew to love, with her bowl-cut hairdo, T-shirt and red shorts. This new Dora appeared to have long flowing hair, and was wearing what seemed a scanty skirt, emphasizing her long, shapely legs.
"Did Mattel turn Dora the Explorer into a Tramp?" read one headline from The Huffington Post.
But not so fast.
Mattel and Nickelodeon both say there are two major misconceptions about the new Dora, which is not replacing the "Dora the Explorer" cartoon, but will be a new interactive doll aimed at 5- to 8-year-olds.
"People care so deeply about this brand and this character," Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon Viacom Consumer Products, says. "The Dora that we all know and love is not going away."
"I think there was just a misconception in terms of where we were going with this," Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing at Mattel, says. "Pretty much the moms who are petitioning aging Dora up certainly don't understand. ... I think they're going to be pleasantly happy once this is available in October, and once they understand this certainly isn't what they are conjuring up."
Part of the confusion stemmed from the silhouette that was released, which made Dora look more like a Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan than a young girl. For the record, the doll does not wear a short dress, but a tunic and leggings. And while she looks older (she's supposed to be about 10), with longer jewelry and longer hair, she doesn't have makeup and seems pretty much like a 10-year-old girl.
Nickelodeon and Mattel say that as part of unrelated research, they found parents wanted a way to keep Dora in their children's lives and have their daughters move on to a toy that was age appropriate.
"The idea is Dora for more girls," Brodsky says. "The whole point was this was created because moms said help us."
But the new version is a significant switch from the Dora many preschoolers have known, aging her so the kids who tend to drop Dora once they hit kindergarten and first grade remain connected to the new character, who has a new group of girlfriends to go exploring with (Sorry, but Boots, the Map, Swiper and other characters from the show didn't make the transition).
The doll, which comes with a USB port and is compatible with online story lines that take Dora and four friends on new adventures involving the environment, social action and more, still has, as Sirard called it, the "Dora DNA."
"What would Dora be if she grew up? You'd have what you'd have before you: a very sweet, wholesome adventurous. ... She's a perfect role model in that regard."
But as Coca-Cola infamously discovered when it trotted out "new Coke" almost 25 years ago and Tropicana recently found out when it changed then reverted to its famous cover design after public confusion and outcry, making any changes, or even additions, to a famous brand can upset consumers.
In this case, Dora is more than a just a cartoon character. The bilingual adventurer, praised for encouraging kids to explore and use their imaginations, is a not only a TV sensation, but a global brand that attracts millions of kids through dolls, clothes, touring shows, DVDs and other merchandising and events.
"A lot of people think of Dora as something for their small kids. And part of the reason people like Dora is because it teaches their kids to be inquisitive and curious in an educational way, because no one wants their kids to grow up fast," says Jean-Pierre Dube, professor of marketing at the University of Chicago's graduate school of business.
Dube says it's not uncommon for children's characters or products to evolve and mature with their age group, but Mattel and Nickelodeon may have complicated matters because instead of aging the actual character, they are introducing an extension of it.
"What we learned from this is people really cherish and value what Dora represents, and if you start trying to license that out or extend that brand, this is a really risky thing to do," he says.
"We could certainly make a case that the public is overreacting and that they're drawing conclusions that aren't there, but there's some important information there, and that is, 'Don't mess with this brand unless you're very careful.'"
Richardson's family gathers near injured actress
NEW YORK Members of Natasha Richardson's family gathered at a New York hospital where the Tony-winning actress was reportedly taken with a serious head injury after falling on a Canadian ski slope.
Richardson, 45, part of the Redgrave dynasty of British actors and the wife of Liam Neeson, was flown from Montreal to New York on Tuesday after the accident, a person close to the family, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Richardson's condition was very serious and her family was highly distressed, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing two people close to her family who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.
A reporter from the Toronto Star earlier reported seeing a distraught Neeson crouched inside the back of an ambulance at Montreal's Sacre-Coeur hospital as Richardson, wrapped in blankets and with tubes covering her face, was loaded inside. Neeson had immediately left the Toronto set of his upcoming movie, "Chloe," to be by her side in Montreal, a publicist for the film said.
Later that evening, a somber looking Vanessa Redgrave, Richardson's mother, was seen in photographs walking into Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Two boys, identified in photos as her sons, Micheal Richard Antonio Neeson and Daniel Jack Neeson, and a young woman identified as niece Daisy Bevan were seen leaving the hospital early Wednesday. Richardson's condition and the specifics of her injury could not immediately be determined.
Richardson is the elder daughter of Oscar-winning Redgrave and the late director Tony Richardson. She fell during a private lesson Monday at the famed Mont Tremblant ski resort.
"We know that she has had an accident but we really do not know any more details," said Kika Markham, who is married to Richardson's uncle, Corin Redgrave. "We are very concerned."
A statement from the Mont Tremblant resort said Richardson fell on a beginners trail and later reported not feeling well.
"She did not show any visible sign of injury but the ski patrol followed strict procedures and brought her back to the bottom of the slope and insisted she should see a doctor," said the statement from the resort, about 80 miles northwest of Montreal.
The ski resort said the instructor and a member of the ski patrol accompanied Richardson to her hotel, where they again recommended she be seen by a doctor. Mont Tremblant spokeswoman Catherine Lacasse said Richardson said she seemed fine at first.
"An hour later she said she didn't feel well. She had a headache, so we sent her to the hospital," Lacasse said. "There were no signs of impact and no blood, nothing."
The New York Times quoted Lyne Lortie, a spokeswoman for Mont Tremblant, as saying Richardson wasn't wearing a helmet.
Richardson's films include "Gothic," "A Month in the Country," "Nell" (in which she appeared with her future husband), "The Parent Trap" and "Maid in Manhattan."
Trained at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, Richardson has had extensive stage experience in the West End and Broadway. She won a Tony in 1998 for playing Sally Bowles in a revival of "Cabaret."
Her maternal grandparents were the actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, and her uncle Corin and aunt Lynn Redgrave are both actors. Sister Joely Richardson is also an actress, best known for starring in the TV series "Nip/Tuck."
In January, Richardson and her mother played the roles of mother and daughter in a one-night benefit concert version of "A Little Night Music," the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical, at Studio 54 in New York.
She married Neeson in 1994, and the couple have two sons, aged 13 and 12.