The phone call I received last Tuesday morning was the call everybody dreads.
It was one of Natasha Richardson’s best friends from New York, saying there
was very bad news. Natasha had had a skiing accident in Canada, had
complained of a headache and, shortly afterwards, collapsed. It seemed she
had suffered a brain haemorrhage, and she wasn’t coming back. She was being
flown to New York later that day so everyone could say good-bye to her. I
got on a plane straight away.
I had spoken to Tasha just a few days before to make a plan to meet up in
London in a couple of weeks’ time. She, her husband, Liam Neeson, and their
12-year-old son, Danny, were coming round for a Sun-day-night takeaway
curry, and then the two of us were to have a girls’ catchup a few days later
over lunch. It was a hurried but happy call. She was rushing to the airport
to take her elder son, Micheal, 13, and his friend skiing.
I can clearly remember the first time I met Natasha, eight years ago. I had
been taken on a date to a glitzy party by a handsome New Yorker (I was
living there at the time) and was obviously looking lost. She came over.
“Nightmare when you don’t know anyone,” she said. “Come and have a fag by
the bar.”
This warmth most marked her character, matched by a wonderful bellow of
laughter that came from the bottom of her belly, easily and with enthusiasm.
She had a way of gathering people around her, of making her friends into
family. I became one of them.
She created for us all a safe haven from the world at the family’s farmhouse
in upstate New York – she had moved to the States at the beginning of the
1990s. Of course I knew her only as a friend but from what I saw, she took
her roles as mother, wife, sister and daughter seriously.
She adored her two boys. She was so proud of them; they were the very centre
of her life. She was tenderly attentive, making sure she had time with them
separately – hence the ski trip with Micheal, and London with Danny. She
would get them to teach her hip-hop routines. If they were horsing about in
the pool, she would be the first to jump in fully clothed, if that was the
spirit of the moment.
Liam was her man, the love of her life. She adored his strength and
gentleness, and – like many others – she greatly respected his talent. She
was physically tiny next to him, but really she stood equal, by the sheer
force of her character.
Crunching up that drive late on a Friday afternoon would mean a jug of frozen
cocktails (she was obsessed by perfecting the latest tipple, from lychee
martini to pomegranate margarita), endless delicious things to eat, games
and gossip late into the night, swimming, tennis, a peppering of glamorous
guests and a weekend that was a world away from the humdrum and banal.
After a late night – and you would never get away not staying up late with her
– you’d get up in the morning to find the house immaculate, a plate of fresh
croissants and a huge pot of steaming coffee on the table alongside all the
papers. Two drained cups of builder’s tea standing by the sink would be the
only evidence that she was already on her morning errands.
Much of the weekend was taken up with eating. She was unbelievably greedy and,
boy, could she cook. Some of my happiest memories are of sitting at the
chopping block in her wooden kitchen, watching her slice and fry and bake.
She had shelves and shelves of cookbooks, with curling Postit notes marking
hundreds of favourite recipes.
She could knock out a beurre blanc to match the speciality at J Sheekey, that
favourite restaurant of London actors, and spent hours working out how to
replicate the salad dressing at Club 55, her adored lunch spot in St Tropez.
She even had a special Cuban box to roast whole hogs in the garden for
parties.
As a girlfriend, she encapsulated all those mythical qualities that you’d
never thought could exist outside fiction: she could walk for miles in
insanely high heels, mix a perfect cocktail, transform herself from
barefaced imp to glamour goddess with just 15 minutes and her box of make-up
tricks. She understood the equal importance of caviar and burgers, of Dom
Pérignon and Tetley. She could dance like a stripper and sing like an angel.
She had figured out that the perfect nail colour involved layers of
different polishes.
She would always remember a present you had given her, and wear it – I
remember being pleased to see her, every summer, sporting a little turquoise
and coral anklet I gave her for a birthday years ago, though she never
pointed it out particularly.
She had a quirky eye for detail. After she found out that I didn’t like ice in
my water, the jug by my bedside when I went to stay always had a little
typed label stuck onto it – “Jo’s water, no ice”.
In fact, she was obsessed by her electric hand-held labelling gadget: she
would wander round the house with it in one hand, long slender white
cigarette in the other (though she gave up smoking – finally, triumphantly –
last year, after years of battling), finding things to give a name. Drawers
in the kitchen: “Onions, potatoes”. Shelves in the hall: “Boys’ gloves”. One
almost expected to be presented with a label – “Darling friend”, you hope it
would have said – when you arrived for dinner.
While one side of her life was Manolos, movie premieres and fashion parties,
she also had a brilliant taste for the other side of things too. I remember
her saying that her father always told her that to be truly stylish you had
to throw in an element of trash. Hence the string of naked multi-coloured
bulbs over the table outside.
I once asked her what her idea of a real treat was. She promptly replied that
it was to go and buy a cute new T-shirt from Urban Outfitters, grab a cone
of Tasti-D-Lite (a cheap, low-fat frozen yoghurt) and catch a matinee at the
cinema.
It never made any difference to Tasha whether you were famous or not. Though
her world was made up of the most talented actors of our time, many of whom
– Ralph Fiennes, Meryl Streep, Ian McKellen – were close friends, it was
never because of their fame that she loved them. She was unaffected by that.
I was particularly struck by her even approach when she once flew the butcher
from the village in France where the family holidayed every year to a movie
premiere in New York, and greeted him with the same warmth she would have
shown a fellow star at the afterparty. Many of her best friends were gay;
perhaps this was to do with her father, Tony Richardson, though I think it
was simply because they adored her.
Tasha loved the movies. She always joked that at the age of three, her father
must have dandled her on his knee, saying: “Movies, movies, movies.” I can
picture now the way she watched movies – sitting too close to the screen,
with huge glasses on, shovelling salt popcorn and litres of Diet Coke. She
was always so proud of her friends on screen – a phone call would often
start with, “Have you seen [such-and-such] yet? Wasn’t Ralph/Liam/Meryl
marvellous?”
She was funny, and she sure was opinionated. Be it politics or music or Aids
(she had been a passionate supporter of Amfar, the Aids charity, since her
father’s death from the disease in 1991), she was fearless of getting into a
fight – and we all did get into fights with her.
We’d gird our loins if we knew there was to be a disagreement over something,
over the restaurant to meet at, or whether to go backstage at a concert, or
whether to wait for help from Special Services, the concierge service, at
the airport – she hated flying and loved Special Services with an equal
strength.
I remember once, after a weekend jaunt to Miami, Tasha refused point blank to
get on a plane back to New York because of a bad-weather warning. She made
John Hickey, the actor and her best friend, stay at the airport hotel with
her, and I flew back alone. None of us talked for days.
She was always infuriatingly early to a date. I can picture her now sitting
waiting for me in a restaurant, her paraphernalia spread all over the table
– BlackBerry, lip gloss, sunglasses, two mobile phones, Filo-fax (she
was never able to give it up, despite going digital years ago) – making some
plan or another, always thinking ahead, preparing, so that everything could
be perfect.
I find it comforting to know that Tasha really lived life. She just had
spirit. While so much of her time was taking care of the domestic and
practical demands of running two homes, two complicated careers and a
family, there was something of the gypsy in her. From time to time she’d
need to go off and work, to become something utterly other, to disappear
completely. But she always came back.
How to remember that feeling of summer arriving when you’d hear her voice on
the other end of the line? Her excitement and the flurry of calls and
arrangements when a planned holiday came together? Her ability to disappear
into the moment when she was having fun, the click-clack of her stacked
espadrilles along airport corridors as she raced towards you smiling, waving
and always on the phone?
The gathering of friends and family at the hospital in New York last week was
one of the most moving and extraordinary experiences I will ever have. There
were tears and endless stories – and some laughter too.
Together we watched as the world began to report the news, and smiled over
what she might have said about it. She’d have been the first on the phone to
discuss who printed the best pictures, who got the story right and wrong. A
group of her good friends went out for lunch to a restaurant she loved, and
we raised a glass of champagne to her, because “Champagne is a morning
drink”, as she always said.
There’s no question that the world will be a slighter place without her. As a
towering talent, of course, but to me as a friend.
