Tuesday I was sitting at lunch with Page Six’s Paula Froelich and casting director Bonnie Timmermann at Michael’s restaurant. The head man came and whispered in my ear, “Natasha is dead.” I was worried whether to pass this bad news on to Paula and Bonnie, knowing that the latter was a great friend of Liam Neeson. But I did and therein lies the problem with un-inspected news. He hadn’t said, “Natasha is brain-dead.” He said, “Natasha is dead.” So I ruined Bonnie’s lunch and my own.
Through the afternoon we all realized that this wonderful, unusual star and actress was perhaps not dead and had been moved from Montreal to New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital. Liam, who had been filming in Toronto and had rushed to her side, was now in NYC with the children. I had been waiting for several days for a phone call from Vanessa Redgrave, who was coming to New York to give an award at the UN. The call, of course, never came. Everybody in the family — Liam, the two boys, Vanessa, Lynn Redgrave, Joely Richardson — have all been in the hospital with Natasha, and word is in at 1:30 PM WEDNESDAY they have taken Natasha off of life support. This is not unexpected. Insiders felt yesterday, on learning they were flying Natasha in to Lenox Hill, that this meant her condition was hopeless and they were just finding a place to be together with her and to say good-bye. As one insider remarked:”Nobody goes to Lenox Hill who is really sick; if she’ d had a chance to live, they’d have found another great brain hospital!” This is all just utterly horrible to write!
