The love of your life. Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson’s relationship was straight out of a movie — and even though Richardson passed away in 2009, Neeson never stopped singing her praises.
The Taken actor and Parental trap star met in 1993 while working on Broadway’s Anna Christie. Richardson was married to producer at the time Robert Foxbut her chemistry with the Northern Irish native was unmistakable to both of them.
Although Richardson called the beginning of her relationship with Neeson “bad timing” as her marriage ended at the same time, she did not let it affect their future.
“Obviously I fell deeply in love with him,” said de Cabaret star, who ended her marriage to Fox shortly after the show ended, told the Daily news in an interview published in March 2009.
She also revealed that Neeson’s history as a ladies’ man did not matter to her. “I’m glad women fall in love with him because I know why,” Richardson said.
Their whirlwind romance began after Richardson flew to Poland while Neeson was shooting Schindler’s Listafter receiving a birthday card from the actor.
Upon returning to the US, the couple purchased a farm in upstate New York and tied the knot on their property in July 1994. The Asylum actress surprised her groom with a serenade of their wedding song, “Crazy Love” by Van Morrison during the festivities.
In December 1994, the first joint film of the newlywed couple, Nellhit theaters and six months later they became parents and welcomed their son Micheál in June 2015. Their son Daniel was born the following year.
However, disaster struck in March 2009 when the British actress fell off a beginner slope on Mont Tremblant during a skiing holiday in Québec, Canada, with the couple’s eldest son. She hit her head without a helmet and was returned to her room after reportedly turning down medical attention.
“I talked to her and she said, ‘Oh honey, I fell in the snow.’ That’s how she described it,” Neeson recalled during a 2014 interview with Anderson Cooper for 60 minutes.
Although she felt fine to begin with, the actress suffered a traumatic brain injury during her fall and was later taken to hospital in Montreal. When her husband arrived, he was told she was brain dead and on a ventilator.
“I went up to her and told her I loved her,” says de Love actually star explained. “[I] said, ‘Honey, you’re not coming back from this. You hit your head. It’s — I don’t know if you can hear me, but that’s — this is what happened. And we’ll take you back to New York. All your family and friends will come.’ And that was more or less it.”
Since her death on March 18, 2009, Neeson has kept busy with work and kept relatively quiet about his loss. If he has spoken of his love, it is with affection for what they had together for 15 years.
“They say the hardest thing in the world is to lose someone you love,” said the father of two in one Facebook post in 2016. “My wife passed away unexpectedly. She has brought me so much joy. She was my everything.”
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Scroll down to see everything Neeson has said about his late wife and their life together before her untimely death.