Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson had a love story worthy of a Hollywood movie before the actress’ untimely death in 2009.
Neeson and Richardson met on Broadway while the Parent Trap star was married to another man. Their connection, however, was undeniable.
“She was a radiant beauty,” Neeson told Anderson Cooper in 2014 during a 60 Minutes interview of starring alongside Richardson in 1993’s Anna Christie. “Yeah, cascading hair. I remember. There was — that was very, very attractive.”
Once Richardson divorced her first husband, she and Neeson got together, tying the knot in 1994. The twosome welcomed two children soon after they got married, but their love story was cut short when Richardson died in March 2009 following a fatal ski accident.
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“They say the hardest thing in the world is losing someone you love,” Neeson said via a Facebook post in 2016. “My wife died unexpectedly. She brought me so much joy. She was my everything.”
Scroll down to relive Neeson and Richardson’s relationship from the start — and see what the Taken star has said since he lost his wife:
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Neeson and Richardson met while working together on Broadway’s Anna Christie. Richardson played the title role of Anna Christopherson in the play for two years in London before the show moved to New York and added Neeson as an Irish sailor.
“I’d never had that kind of an explosive chemistry situation with an actor, or actress,” Neeson recalled of his connection on stage with Richardson during a 60 Minutes interview in February 2014. “She and I were like [Fred] Astaire and [Ginger] Rogers. We had just this wonderful kind of dance — free dance on stage every night.”
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Richardson filed for divorce from Robert Fox one month after closing night for Anna Christie. The pair were married four years.
Richardson later told the New York Daily News that she fell in love with Neeson while her “marriage [was] falling apart.” While she called it “bad timing,” the actress confessed, “What can I say? Obviously, I fell very much in love with him.” (The interview was released after her death in 2009.)
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When Richardson turned 30, Neeson reportedly sent her a birthday card that read, “You’re catching up with me,” according to the New York Daily News. He reportedly signed it, “Lots of love, Oskar,” as he was filming Schindler’s List in Poland at the time.
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The pair made their red carpet debut at the 1993 Tony Awards. Richardson was nominated for Best Lead Actress, while Neeson was up for Best Lead Actor for their performances in Anna Christie.
Although Neeson later revealed that Richardson threatened not to marry him if he played James Bond, the duo did tie the knot. The actors said “I do” at their home in upstate New York where they had a farmhouse.
“Behind my back, Natasha had been taking singing lessons to sing it to me,” Neeson said during a January 2016 episode of SiriusXM’s My Favorite Song With John Benjamin Hickey of Richardson’s surprise wedding performance of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love.” He recalled, “After the ceremony, we were all going in to start the night’s festivities and she grabbed the microphone, and she sang me this. I was like, ‘Wow.’”
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The newlyweds costarred in their first movie together, Nell, after Richardson decided to try out for a part in hopes of being closer to her husband on set in North Carolina. “It was difficult to kind of go, ‘Bye, honey! Have fun with the other girls!’” she recalled of the casting via New York Daily News. “I thought I would do anything to play this part.”
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Richardson and Neeson welcomed their first child, son Michéal, on June 22. Michéal later changed his last name to Richardson to honor his late mother.
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The couple expanded their family with the birth of son Daniel on August 27.
“This was a bit unexpected,” Richardson told The Buffalo News at the time of her back-to-back pregnancies. “We wanted more children, just not so close together. I mean, I had just gotten my body and my professional life back in shape when this happened.”
She recalled, “As a woman and a mother, I thought, ‘Great!’ As an actress, I screamed, ‘Help!’ Of course, now I’m just reveling in it. And I love the idea that the children will be so close in age.”
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The pair turned heads as they attended the 56th Annual Tony Awards and presented the award for Best Leading Actress together in New York City.
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Richardson and Neeson got cozy at Studio 54’s opening of A Streetcar Named Desire.
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The lovebirds shared a kiss while attending the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Chanel Costume Institute Gala Opening.
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Richardson and Neeson smiled for the cameras during the Dreamgirls premiere afterparty in the Big Apple.
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One of the couple’s last red carpet events together was at The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspain premiere in New York.
While on a ski vacation in Canada, Richardson hit her head on the slope without a helmet on but reportedly turned down medical attention to start. She later learned she suffered a traumatic brain injury and was taken to the hospital. When Neeson, who was working in Toronto, arrived, he was told she was brain dead and on life support.
“She was on life support … and [I] told her I loved her,” Neeson recalled to Cooper in 2014 of Richardson’s final moments. “[I] said, ‘Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this. You’ve banged your head. … And we’re bringing you back to New York. All your family and friends will come.’”
Richardson was transferred to a New York hospital where her loved ones said goodbye before she was taken off life support. She died at the age of 45.
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“Grief’s like — it hits you. It’s like a wave,” Neeson said during his 60 Minutes interview. “You just get this profound feeling of instability. You feel like a three-legged table. Just suddenly … the Earth isn’t stable anymore. And then it passes and becomes more infrequent, but I still get it sometimes.”
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“I speak to her every day at her grave which is about a mile and a half down the road,” Neeson told the Inquirer.net of his wife’s legacy. “I go down there quite often, so I do speak to her as if she’s here. Not that she answers me.”
Richardson’s Parent Trap costar Elaine Hendrix recalled how much the late actress loved Neeson — and what she talked about on set.
“The first thing that I think about was, first of all, she loved Chardonnay. Cakebread,” Hendrix exclusively told Us Weekly of Richardson. “I just remember in real life, thinking how elegant Natasha was and how she literally would swoon when she talked about Liam Neeson and when she talked about her children.”
She added, “She would get all dreamy and we would all go, ‘Oh.’ Like we all just basked in her love and adoration for him and her family, which made what happened just all the more tragic.”
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While promoting his and Pamela Anderson’s movie The Naked Gun, Neeson reflected on his time on stage with Richardson. “It was great doing it every night with her and falling in love,” he told The New York Times.
