British actress Natasha Richardson, left, is part of a celebrated acting dynasty, which includes her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, centre, and her sister, Joely Richardson.
Actor Liam Neeson, right, and his wife Natasha Richardson were married in 1994.
British actress flown out of Canada after ski accident in Que.The fate of British actress Natasha Richardson will become more clear Wednesday with her family expected to issue a statement about the severe head injury she sustained while skiing at Mont Tremblant in Quebec.
Various tabloids in the United States and Great Britain claim that friends of the actress have been told that Richardson has no brain activity and is therefore brain-dead. But those reports have not been confirmed.
Richardson left Montreal's Sacre Coeur Hospital by ambulance at noon Monday and was taken to a private jet for a flight to New York.
Richardson, 45, fell Monday afternoon on a meandering beginner's trail on the south side of Mont Tremblant.
The actress arrived at the resort on Sunday and hired an instructor for a private ski lesson.
Around 3 p.m., she fell onto slushy snow on a flat area close to the base of the mountain.
She was not wearing a ski helmet, said Mont Tremblant resort spokesperson Catherine Lacasse. Helmets are not mandatory in Quebec.
She did not hit anyone or anything and the ski instructor was by her side within seconds, said Lacasse. Richardson had no cuts or other signs of injury, she added.
Two members of the Mont Tremblant ski patrol responded to a routine call from the instructor, but Richardson maintained she was okay and did not want to see a doctor.
"She was laughing and joking," Lacasse said.
Richardson picked herself up and then returned on her own steam to her room at the luxury Quintessence Hotel on the shores of Lac Tremblant, accompanied by the instructor.
An hour later, complaining of a headache, she was taken by ambulance to the Centre Hospitalier Laurentien in Ste. Agathe and then transferred to the intensive care unit of Hopital Sacre Coeur in Montreal.
Richardson spent less than 24 hours there before being flown to New York.
Richardson's husband, Irish actor Liam Neeson, 56, rushed to Montreal from a film shoot in Toronto when her heard about her injuries.
Michelle Simard, spokesperson at Sacre Coeur, said she had been asked by the family not to release any information about the actress.
Richardson's agents in London and Los Angeles said they were making no comment.
A media report said that Neeson and the couple's two sons — Michael, 13 and Daniel, 12 — were at Sacre Coeur with Richardson before she was flown to New York.
The couple met while filming the miniseries Ellis Island in 1984 and were married a decade later.
Richardson is the daughter of the Oscar-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave and the late director Tony Richardson and the sister of Joely Richardson, star of television's Nip/ Tuck drama.
Natasha Richardson is best known to moviegoers for her roles in The Parent Trap, Maid in Manhattan and Nell, in which she co-starred with Neeson. She won a Tony award in 1998 for her role in the musical Cabaret.
Richardson was set to return to Broadway shortly to star in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music with her mother after a successful run of the same play in London last year.
Neurologists say it's normal for people with serious brain injuries to start exhibiting symptoms several hours after an accident.
"The brain takes time to swell, so a person may feel OK at that point but when the brain swells there is pressure," said Dr. Alain Ptito of the Montreal Neurological Institute. "Then we start seeing more severe symptoms."
A skier who witnessed the fall recalled Tuesday that Richardson didn't look badly hurt at first.
"I saw some lady on her side, and I saw a snowmobile with a bed," said Edward Hoover. "She didn't seem so bad at first. But when I got back to my room, I heard that it got pretty bad."
Another witness, Craig Thornton, 51, Mississauga, Ont., said he was a chairlift halfway up the McCullogh ski run when he saw a group of ski patrollers working on a woman who was not wearing a helmet.
Thornton estimated they worked on her for about 45 minutes because she was still on the ground when he rode the same chairlift again after his run.
"When you see people who fall on the hill they usually take them off fairly quickly they had her there for a fairly long time before they took her off," he said, adding ski conditions were icy Monday.
"It's spring conditions, right? So it's not great skiing."
Quebec is in fact looking into the possibility of making helmets mandatory on the slopes as early as next year.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Actress+Richardson+critical+after+Quebec+accident/1396075/story.html
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/18/richardson.accident/index.html
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2009/03/18/richardson-natasha-ny.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aXuH_CcQz_Vs&refer=home
