The love of a lifetime. Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson’s relationship was something right out of a movie — and although Richardson passed away in 2009, Neeson has never stopped singing her praises.
The Taken actor and Parent Trap star met in 1993 while working on Broadway’s Anna Christie. At the time, Richardson was married to producer Robert Fox, but her chemistry with the Northern Ireland native was undeniable to them both.
Although Richardson called the beginning of her relationship with Neeson “bad timing” since her marriage was coming to an end simultaneously, she didn’t let it affect their future.
“Obviously I fell very much in love with him,” the Cabaret star, who ended her marriage to Fox shortly after the show closed, told the Daily News in an interview published in March 2009.
She also revealed that Neeson’s history of being a ladies’ man didn’t matter to her. “I’m pleased that women fall in love with him, because I know why,” Richardson said.
Their whirlwind romance took off after Richardson flew to Poland while Neeson was shooting Schindler’s List, following her receiving a birthday card from the actor.
Upon returning to the U.S., the pair bought a farmhouse in upstate New York and in July 1994 they tied the knot on their property. 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 newlyweds’ first joint movie, Nell, hit theaters and six months later they became parents, welcoming their son Micheál in June 2015. Their son Daniel was born the following year.
Tragedy, however, struck in March 2009, when the British actress fell coming down a beginner slope on Mont Tremblant while on a ski vacation in Québec, Canada, with the couple’s oldest son. She hit her head without a helmet on and was brought back to her room after reportedly turning down medical attention.
“I spoke to her and she said, ‘Oh, darling, I’ve taken a tumble in the snow.’ That’s how she described it,” Neeson recalled during a 2014 interview with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes.
Although she felt OK to start, the actress had suffered a traumatic brain injury during her fall and was later taken to the hospital in Montreal. When her husband arrived, he was told that she was brain dead and on life support.
“I went in to her and told her I loved her,” the Love Actually star explained. “[I] said, ‘Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this. You’ve banged your head. It’s — I don’t know if you can hear me, but that’s — this is what’s gone down. And we’re bringing ya 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 himself busy with work and kept relatively quiet about his loss. When he has spoken about his love, it’s been with fondness for what they had together for 15 years.
“They say the hardest thing in the world is losing someone you love,” the father of two said in a Facebook post in 2016. “My wife died unexpectedly. She brought me so much joy. She was my everything.”
Scroll down to see everything Neeson has said about his late wife and their life together before her untimely death.
“That’s the weird thing about grief. You can’t prepare for it. You think you’re gonna cry and get it over with. You make those plans, but they never work,” he told Esquire in March 2011. “It hits you in the middle of the night — well, it hits me in the middle of the night. I’m out walking. I’m feeling quite content. And it’s like suddenly, boom. It’s like you’ve just done that in your chest.”
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“She was a radiant beauty,” Neeson told Anderson Cooper in 2014 during a 60 Minutes interview of working with Richardson on Broadway. “Yeah, cascading hair. I remember. There was — that was very, very attractive.”
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“I'd never had that kind of an explosive chemistry situation with an actor, or actress,” the actor recalled of his time on stage with Richardson in 1993’s Anna Christie. “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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Following the Parent Trap actress’ passing, Neeson revealed that “it was never real” to him that she wouldn’t come back. “There's periods now in our New York residence when I hear the door opening, especially the first couple of years, she would always drop the keys in the — on the table. Say, ‘Hello?’” he recalled during the 60 Minutes interview. “So anytime I hear that door opening I still think I'm gonna hear her, you know. And, then, it's — grief's like — it hits you. It's like a wave. You just get this profound feeling of instability. You feel like a three-legged table. Just suddenly you just — the Earth isn't stable anymore. And then it passes and becomes more infrequent, but I still get it sometimes.”
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In 2016, the Schindler’s List star remembered Richardson in a social media post, writing, "They say the hardest thing in the world is losing someone you love. My wife died unexpectedly. She brought me so much joy. She was my everything.”
He reflected upon his nearly two-decade romance with the actress in the Facebook post adding, “Those 16 years of being her husband taught me how to love unconditionally. We have to stop and be thankful for our spouses. Because, one day, when you look up from your phone, they won't be there anymore. What I truly learned most of all is, live and love everyday like it's your last. Because, one day, it will be."
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In January 2016, the Northern Ireland native opened up about his 1994 nuptials, noting that Richardson surprised him by serenading him with their wedding song, “Crazy Love” by Van Morrison. “Behind my back, Natasha had been taking singing lessons to sing it to me,” Neeson said during an episode of SiriusXM’s My Favorite Song with John Benjamin Hickey. "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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