Liam Neeson’s Sweetest Quotes About His Late Wife Natasha Richardson

Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson’s relationship was something right out of a movie — and although Richardson passed away in 2009, Neeson has never stopped singing her praises. Neeson and Richardson met in 1993 while working on Broadway’s Anna Christie, one year after her split from producer Robert Fox. Although Richardson called the beginning of her relationship with Neeson “bad timing," she didn’t let it affect their future, and the pair tied the knot in 1994. They welcomed son Micheál the following year, with Daniel completing their family in 1996. Tragedy, however, struck in March 2009, when the British actress fell coming down a beginner slope on Mont Tremblant while on a ski vacation in Québec, Canada. She hit her head without a helmet on and was brought back to her room after reportedly turning down medical attention. Although she felt OK to start, the actress had suffered a traumatic brain injury during her fall and was later taken to the hospital in Montreal. When her husband arrived, he was told that she was brain dead and on life support. Since her death on March 18, 2009, Neeson has kept himself busy with work and kept relatively quiet about his loss. When he has spoken about Richardson, it’s been with fondness for what they had together for 15 years. "They say the hardest thing in the world is losing someone you love,” the father of two said in a Facebook post in 2016. “My wife died unexpectedly. She brought me so much joy. She was my everything.” 16 years after losing Richardson, Neeson found a second chance at love with The Naked Gun costar Pamela Anderson. Richardson's friend, Andy Cohen, shared that he and other members of their inner circle were "stanning" the new couple. Scroll down to see everything Neeson has said about his late wife and their life together before her untimely death.

“That’s the weird thing about grief. You can’t prepare for it. You think you’re gonna cry and get it over with. You make those plans, but they never work,” he told Esquire in March 2011. “It hits you in the middle of the night — well, it hits me in the middle of the night. I’m out walking. I’m feeling quite content. And it’s like suddenly, boom. It’s like you’ve just done that in your chest.”

“She was a radiant beauty,” Neeson told Anderson Cooper in 2014 during a 60 Minutes interview of working with Richardson on Broadway. “Yeah, cascading hair. I remember. There was — that was very, very attractive.”

“I'd never had that kind of an explosive chemistry situation with an actor, or actress,” the actor recalled of his time on stage with Richardson in 1993’s Anna Christie. “She and I were like [Fred] Astaire and [Ginger] Rogers. We had just this wonderful kind of dance — free dance on stage every night.”

The Taken actor revealed that his late wife was a caretaker to all, throughout their marriage and time together. “She cared for everybody. She has — she has a motherly instinct,” he told Cooper. “And she'd make dinners for everyone and just looked after us all. You know?” Neeson added that he “would always see the glass half empty” whereas Richardson would “see it half full.”

Following the Parent Trap actress’ passing, Neeson revealed that “it was never real” to him that she wouldn’t come back. “There's periods now in our New York residence when I hear the door opening, especially the first couple of years, she would always drop the keys in the — on the table. Say, ‘Hello?’” he recalled during the 60 Minutes interview. “So anytime I hear that door opening I still think I'm gonna hear her, you know. And, then, it's — grief's like — it hits you. It's like a wave. You just get this profound feeling of instability. You feel like a three-legged table. Just suddenly you just — the Earth isn't stable anymore. And then it passes and becomes more infrequent, but I still get it sometimes.”

In 2016, the Schindler’s List star remembered Richardson in a social media post, writing, "They say the hardest thing in the world is losing someone you love. My wife died unexpectedly. She brought me so much joy. She was my everything.”

He reflected upon his nearly two-decade romance with the actress in the Facebook post adding, “Those 16 years of being her husband taught me how to love unconditionally. We have to stop and be thankful for our spouses. Because, one day, when you look up from your phone, they won't be there anymore. What I truly learned most of all is, live and love everyday like it's your last. Because, one day, it will be."

In January 2016, the Northern Ireland native opened up about his 1994 nuptials, noting that Richardson surprised him by serenading him with their wedding song, “Crazy Love” by Van Morrison. “Behind my back, Natasha had been taking singing lessons to sing it to me,” Neeson said during an episode of SiriusXM’s My Favorite Song with John Benjamin Hickey. "After the ceremony, we were all going in to start the night's festivities, and she grabbed the microphone, and she sang me this. I was like, 'Wow.'"

The Kinsey actor recalled the story again in February 2023, telling Rolling Stone that he never took a serious meeting with Broccoli because of Richardson’s marriage threat.

“She gave me a James Bond ultimatum,” Neeson explained. “And she meant it! Come on, there’s all those gorgeous girls in various countries getting into bed and getting out of bed. I’m sure a lot of her decision-making was based on that!”

The A-Team star, however, never let her escape James Bond, explaining that he would go “behind her back, making my fingers as though I’m holding a gun” while humming the theme song from time to time. “I loved doing that s--t!”