Liam Neeson Wife: 'Taken' Star Opens Up About Spouse's Death, Says Couple Had Pact; What Were The Details?
Liam Neeson, star of Schindler's List and Taken, finally opens up about the death and loss of his wife Natasha Richardson. Neeson mentions, in an upcoming interview with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes scheduled to air on Sunday Feb. 23, that he and his wife made a death pact in case either of them were in a vegetative state.
According to the Vancouver Sun, Neeson arrived at the Montreal hospital to discover that his wife had been left brain dead after a skiing accident in Quebec's Mont Tremblant in 2009.
"She was on life support," Neeson said, "I told her I loved her [and] sweetie you're not coming back from this, you've banged your head," Neeson added. It was because of the death pact that they agreed on, when Neeson saw all of the tubes coming out of Richardson, he knew she was gone. Richardson and Neeson were married in 1994 for 15 years.
Richardson suffered a head injury after skiing down on a beginner slope in Montreal. The New York Daily News reported that at first Richardson laughed it off, but she complained of a headache that would not go away. Then two hours later Richardson was rushed to Montreal hospital. At the hospital, doctors discovered that Richardson had an accumulation of blood between her brain and her skull, known as an epidural hematoma.
Richardson was born on May 11, 1963, and died March 18, 2009; she was only 45 years old. It has been five years since Richardson's death.
In Us Weekly, Neeson, 61, is still affected by the loss of his wife. Neeson and Richardson have two sons, Michael, 19, and and Daniel, 18. For Neeson, her death still does not seem real. For a number of years after her death, Neeson explains that he felt that his wife would walk through their door at any moment.
"You get this profound feeling of instability," Neeson said, "The Earth isn't stable anymore, and then it passes and it becomes more infrequent, but I still get it sometimes," he said.
Neeson's hope and optimism comes from knowing that Richardson's organs were donated; her heart, kidneys and liver "are keeping three people alive."
"It's terrific, and I think she would have been pleased by that," Neeson said.