From Stephanie Zacharek (Salon):
[...]But when I watched a Richardson performance, I never found myself comparing her skills to those of her mother, unfavorably or otherwise. I would look at her face and marvel at how her mother’s face was now also alive in hers. Richardson resembled her mother even more than her sister, Joely, does (although of course the resemblance is there, too), and I always loved that sense of continuity and promise. Over the past few days, I found myself enraged to see that numerous celebrity gossip sites — I refuse to honor their existence by linking to them here — ran pictures of Redgrave as she arrived at the hospital to see her daughter: There’s a distinction to be made between covering a story that means something to people and intruding on a family’s private grief. But under any other circumstances, I’m happy to look at pictures of Redgrave. Now the child’s face lives on in the mother’s.
Ms. Zacharek talked about how some very gifted actors never get their due time in Hollywood because their peculiarity made it difficult for them to find suitable roles. This was unfortunately the case for Natasha Richardson; having seen none of her works, I could only infer from her relationship with Liam Neeson – whom I respect as an actor – and her attention to theatre despite coming from a cinema royal family that she was someone special. Hollywood is indeed unforgiving of failed dreams, but what of missed ones?
