NATASHA RICHARDSON Biography - Actors and Actresses

 
 

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NATASHA RICHARDSON

Name: Natasha Jane Richardson                                                       
Born: 11 May 1963 London, England                                                   
                                                                                   
Natasha Jane Richardson (born May 11, 1963) is a Tony Award-winning English         
actress and member of the Redgrave family, an enduring English theatrical           
dynasty. She is well-known through several leading roles in films, however, she     
is most famous through her award-winning roles on Broadway.                         
                                                                                   
Richardson was born in London into the Redgrave family, and named after the         
heroine in Leo Tolstoy's famous novel, War and Peace. She is the daughter of the   
late director and producer Tony Richardson and Academy Award-winning actress       
Vanessa Redgrave, and a granddaughter of the late actors Sir Michael Redgrave       
and Rachel Kempson. Her sister is Joely Richardson. She is also the niece of       
actress Lynn Redgrave and actor Corin Redgrave, and cousin of Jemma Redgrave.       
Richardson made her film debut at the age of four in a film directed by her         
father, Charge of the Light Brigade, in the year 1968. She attended St. Paul's     
Girls' School for several years, and then trained at London's Central School of     
Speech and Drama.                                                                   
                                                                                   
Richardson began her career in regional theatre, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse   
in Leeds, England. Her screen debut in Every Picture Tells a Story in 1984, was     
followed by a CBS miniseries, Ellis Island. A year later, Richardson appeared in   
a revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull; her first professional work in London's   
West End. That same year she made her UK television debut alongside Jeremy Brett   
and David Burke in The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes appearing as Violet Hunter     
in the episode "The Copper Beeches". Soon after, she starred in a London stage     
production of High Society, adapted from the acclaimed Cole Porter film, and       
successively portrayed Mary Godwin in the 1987 Ken Russell film, Gothic. The       
same year she starred opposite Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth in A Month in the   
Country, directed by Pat O'Connor. A major moment in advancement was her           
starring role in The Handmaid's Tale (1990), playing opposite Robert Duvall and     
Faye Dunaway. She starred in Nell (1994) alongside her future husband Liam         
Neeson and Jodie Foster.                                                           
                                                                                   
She blocked the ITV remake of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, against the       
wishes of writer Alan Sillitoe, for "personal reasons." Danny Brocklehurst's       
adaptation was to be a major reworking for the original 1950s novel. Richardson     
denied access to the story, angering many industry professionals                   
who believe the novel is due a reappraisal, forty seven years after the original   
film, produced by Richardson's father, was made.