Vanessa Redgrave Biography

Vanessa Redgrave Bio Sketch:

Name	Vanessa Redgrave
Date Of Birth	30-Jan-37
Place Of Birth	London, England, UK
Height	5′ 11"
Weight	Be the first to add this
Nationality	British
Celebrity Status	English actress

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Vanessa Redgrave Postpones Appearance

 The great Vanessa Redgrave, who is mourning the tragic death of eldest daughter Natasha Richardson, has opted to postpone her appearance for April 27 at New York Cathedral Church of St John the Divine. The Academy Award winning actress was set to perform onstage for the version of “The Year of Magical Thinking”.

 Vanessa Redgrave performed in a production of the same play on Broadway in 2007 and it is about meditation on the deaths of the main character’s husband and daughter. Penned by Joan Didion, she also performed the show in London that same year to rave reviews. Vanessa Redgrave’s sought a postponement as she was still in the grieving process for the death of her daughter in what was an apparent minor skiing accident in Mont Tremblant Ski Resort in Quebec Canada last week. The spokesman for the Cathedral, Jonathan Korzen, confirmed the announcement and assured that the performance would be rescheduled for a later date.

Family and Friends with Natasha Richardson One Last Time

Liam Neeson, the husband of the late Natasha Richardson, was distraught when he was with friends and family who were mourning at the private viewing of his wife last March 20, 2008. In attendance in the private viewing were Mike Nichols and wife Diane Sawyer, Matthew Modine, Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, and Mathilde Krim of the American Foundation of AIDS Research.

Friends still express shock over the sudden and tragic loss of Natasha Richardson. Matthew Broderick said that the late actress was “a very close friend of our family, so it’s been a very, very sad few days and I think it will stay that way for a good while.” Fellow actor Jonathan Cake said he had dinner with her, just the two of them Saturday night and she left to ski the next day.” Mathilde Krim, who had worked with Natasha Richardson at AmFAR said she “looked incredibly beautiful” and echoed the state of shock all were in the private viewing.

Natasha Richardson’s Family Remembers Her at Necrological Services

Before the family’s decision to take Natasha Richardson off of life-support, Vanessa Redgrave, her mother, sang her “Edelweiss”. It was the same song that Vanessa Redgrave sang for her daughter’s first marriage to Robert Fox.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick paid their respects to the late actress, with Sarah Jessica Parker quoting from the Cole Porter song “Every Time We Say Goodbye”,

“Every time we say goodbye, I die a little.

Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little.

Why the gods above me, who must be in the know,

think so little of me they allow you to go.

When you’re near there’s such an air of spring about it.

I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it.

There’s no love song finer but how strange the change from major to minor,

Every time we say goodbye, every single time we say goodbye.”

Natasha Richardson’s Casket Taken to Upstate Home

The mahogany casket bearing the remains of Natasha Richardson was brought to her home where she married her husband in 1994. The coffin was emblazoned with the Irish claddagh symbol meaning love, friendship and loyalty was driven from a Manhattan townhouse to upstate Millbrook after friends and family paid their respects at a private viewing the night before.

The New York Daily News reported that state police and local sheriff’s deputies kept reporters at bay as the hearse turned into the couple’s home about ninety miles outside of New York City in the Hudson Valley. While there is no official word on a funeral has been made, it has been suggested that she would be laid to rest in Millbrook at the earliest Sunday, with no information provided on any arrangements for a funeral coming from the immediate family as of late Saturday. Her remains were viewed by a stream of mourners at the American Irish Historical Society’s headquarters in Manhattan and the visitors included fellow actors Ralph Fiennes, Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Sarah Jessica Parker, designer Kenneth Cole and shock jock Howard Stern.

Natasha Richardson’s Husband and Mother Watch Dim Lights Broadway Tribute

Natasha Richardson’s surviving family, husband Liam Neeson and mother Vanessa Redgrave watched New York City’s Broadway lights dim for their beloved, as a tribute of the theatre world for the loss of one of their own stars.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick joined them on Broadway while Liam Neeson shielded his eyes under a baseball cap. Natasha Richardson had passed away after an apparent minor fall caused brain haemorrhaging leading to her death. On Thursday, Natasha Richardson’s uncle Colin Redgrave released a statement that she would always be remembered as “a wonderful, very glamorous person and a very beautiful person”.  Fellow Broadway star Patrick Wilson remembers Natasha Richardson as “a fantastic talent” when he was interviewed by US Weekly at the revival of “The West Side Story”. Kathleen Turner intimated to US Weekly that she was “heartsick” and “I loved her, we knew each other and we liked each other”. She said she was a great admirer of her work as she was of Kathleen Turner’s own and “She was a terrific person and her loss is just shocking.”

Tributes to Richardson Pour In

Many members of the industry where Natasha Richardson have started paying tributes to the Tony Award winning actress as she lay in the hospital reportedly brain dead from a head injury on a ski slope.

One of the first ones to make a statement was Lindsay Lohan, who starred with Richardson in the Disney movie “Parent Trap” saying “she was a wonderful woman and actress and she treated me like I was her own”. Lohan, who was then a preteen in the movie, continued, “my heart goes out to her family and this is a tragic loss.”

Dame Judi Dench told the BBC that Richardson was “a really great actress who had an incredibly luminous quality that you seldom see and a great sense of humour”. Another one in disbelief is Sam Mendes, the producer of “Cabaret” where Richardson won her Tony award, said that “it defies belief that this gifted, brave, tenacious, wonderful woman is gone.”

Tremblant Official Narrates the Events at the Resort

Yves Coderre, director of operations for the Mont Tremblant resort said the first 911 call came at 12:43 pm Monday and the emergency personnel arrived 17 minutes later. He said that the Tony award-winning actress refused medical attention and thus the ambulance staffers turned and left after spotting a sled taking the still conscious actress to the resort’s on-site clinic. At 3:00 pm, the medical personnel received a second 911 call directly to the actress’ room as her condition deteriorated. When medical personnel arrived, Natasha Richardson was still conscious and the paramedics could talk to her, but she had showed signs of instability. The medics tended to the actress for about thirty minutes before she was transported to a hospital that was a forty-minute drive away. The resort became subdued upon learning of the death of Natasha Richardson would employees of the resort refusing to speak to news personnel about the accident.

The Experts Comment on Natasha Richardson’s Death

A fall where one hits their head on a hard surface must undertake immediate measures to find out the extent of the injury. But in the case of Natasha Richardson, the help came too late, as she was only able to reach the hospital nearly four hours after her fall on the slopes of Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec, Canada.

Patients may feel fine after their fall as it takes time for the bleeding to swell up in the brain. If left untreated, the patient experiences headaches then falls into a coma and the procedure doctors do would be to cut off part of the skull to give the brain room to swell. According to Dr Edward Aulisi, Chief of Neurosurgery at Washington Hospital Center says that “once you have more swelling, it causes more trauma that causes more swelling becoming a vicious cycle because everything is inside a closed space, thus the need to open up the skull.” A simple head CT scan can detect bleeding, bruising or the beginning of swelling in the brain and the best preventive measure is to have one to know the extent of the injury, which Dr Aulisi says “is the best 20 seconds you ever spent in your life.”

Autopsy Showed Natasha Richardson Died from Bleeding in Brain

An autopsy yielded the cause of death for the beloved Natasha Richardson and it was bleeding in her skull caused by the falls she had on a ski slope. The medical examiner ruled her death as “an accident” and doctors have said she might have survived had she received immediate treatment. But unfortunately, nearly four hours had elapsed between her lethal fall and her admission to a hospital thus making her condition irreversible.

The medical report stated that she suffered an epidural hematoma which results in bleeding between the skull and the brain’s covering. This bleeding is preceded by a skull fracture and can easily produce a blood clot which puts pressure on the brain and that pressure can force the grey matter downwards that injures the brain stem, the part of the brain that causes many autonomic functions such as breathing and the heart. Patients suffering such an injury would feel fine immediately after the incident because the bleeding takes time to emerge. It was also learned that this is a very treatable condition if one is aware of the problem and the injured individual receives immediate medical condition, but there is only a small window of time to correct this injury.