Liam Neeson, who last night lost his wife Natasha Richardson after she suffered a freak brain injury while skiing in Canada, has played some larger-than-life characters in his film career - among them the Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, the 18th century Scottish folk hero Rob Roy, and the German industrialist Oskar Schindler who rescued hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. But the role that has come back to haunt him today is a relatively minor one - that of Daniel in the 2003 Richard Curtis film, Love Actually.
The rom-com was best known for Bill Nighy's comic turn as a comeback rock star, and Hugh Grant's performance as a bachelor prime minister who falls in love with a Downing Street secretary played by Martine McCutcheon.
But one of the key story-lines in the film dealt with a man devastated after losing his wife in a premature death and who now had to bring up his young stepson Sam - played by Thomas Sangster (pictured in the movie with Neeson) - single-handedly. It is exactly the role Leeson in which now finds himself with his two sons, Micheal and Daniel, following Natasha's sudden death.
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As reported here yesterday, the 45-year-old actress died just a day after being flown to Manhattan from Montreal with a brain injury suffered in a minor skiing accident at Mont Tremblant in the Laurentians.
Richardson fell on the beginner's slope and appeared to be fine. But an hour after returning to her room she began to suffer headaches and once she was taken to hospital it became clear that the injury was critical. Rumours emerged almost immediately that she was 'brain dead'.
Many members of her family, including her mother Vanessa Redgrave, her younger sister Joely Richardson, and her two teenage boys were able to visit her at the Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan before she died yesterday evening. Neeson had immediately left the set of a film he was shooting in Toronto to be at her bedside, first in Montreal and then in New York.
The family have issued a statement saying they are "shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha". There is still no official explanation of her death, but it is thought by medical experts who have spoken to the media that she most likely suffered an internal haemorrhage between the skull and the brain.
Richardson was the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and Tony Richardson, the English theatre and film director who was married to Vanessa from 1962 to 1967.
Leeson, a former truck driver and forklift operator for Guinness, who only turned to acting in his mid-20s, found himself marrying into the Redgrave family, one of Britain's most famous theatrical dynasties, after working on two projects with Natasha in 1993-1994.
They appeared on Broadway together in the 1993 revival of the Eugene O'Neill play Anna Christie by the Roundabout Theatre Company and starred as two doctors in the 1994 Jodie Foster film, Nell.
Anna Christie won them both nominations for Tony awards, but only the play itself won one - for best revival. Natasha would go on to win a Tony five years later for her role in a new Broadway production of Cabaret.
