Natasha Richardson and the Curious Nature of Thespian Mortality

First, a disclosure of sorts. I am a bit of a sucker for movies with a romantic bent. I define as romantic anything that appeals to my sense of a better world. For example, I cried in the theater for two hours straight watching Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner. Why? Because baseball was a big thing to me while was growing up and the whole "reconnect with dad thing" hit me where it hurts.

I like romantic movies as well that deliver insights about love and relationships, and sometimes crave violently romantic films such as Gladiator that romanticize honor and courage, fortitude and friendship. Those are all greatly romantic themes if you think about it.

I disclose my interest in all things romantic because I am about to confess to you an exceedingly guilty pleasure. One of my favorite romantic movies of all time is the silly romantic comedy called "The Parent Trap" starring Natasha Richardson, Dennis Quaid and Lindsay Lohan. Perhaps you've seen it? Lohan plays the dual digital role of a set of red-headed twins separated at birth by parents who separated when the kids were still to young to know. The movie has its comic moments, but it is the acting of Natasha Richardson, who plays the mother of the twins, that lends a certain positive substance to the film. It's all pretty harmless stuff, and I like it. I always kid my wife by saying, "Wanna watch the best movie ever made?" She just scoffs.

I've watched The Parent Trap probably 10 times. It's a lark, full of interesting scenery and broad brush characters who fill it amply enough.

When you watch a movie enough times you get to know the characters pretty well. They become like old friends after a while. Then you start to see through the acting and wonder what it must be like to actually play the roles. Lots of actors don't even watch their own movies, being too critical of their own performance. But even as a casual viewer you can begin to appreciate how much work and focus it takes to be a really good actor. That realization lends extra credence to movies that really work.

It is strange in some ways to see actors and actresses shift roles, going from movies where everything is silly to more serious roles where real problems wear the character down.

Which is where we begin to dial into real life. Because the same feeling I get upon seeing an actor or actress in a surprising new role was the feeling I got when I saw Natasha Richardson's face pop up on the television screen during a report that she had been critically hurt in a weird accident at a ski resort. Sometimes life hits you with news that's even stranger than the movies. I had the weird sensation: This is a role she should not be playing.

Natasha Richardson has been a highly capable actress in many roles, and it is actresses and actors like her that build such strong connections between the public and the performers. Take the character played by Emma Thompson in the film Love, Actually. Thompson literally seems to channel the soul of a woman trying to protect her marriage as her husband succumbs to the temptations of a younger woman at his advertising agency. In the face of this threat to her marital stability, we see Thompson's character grappling with the frustrations of an aging figure and find her studying herself in the mirror, wondering what her husband sees in her now, if anything. All the while her character devotedly cares for her children as if they were the very foundation of her existence. Which they are.

Actresses like Richardson and Thompson plays these parts so heartbreakingly well, they make a permanent impression on our psyches. Success in such roles makes us curious as to how someone could have such insight, could turn film fiction into something that feels so real. That's why we listen to actors and actresses who talk about the roles they play in movies and onstage.
Their characters get merged with their own personas, and both become a sort of public property.

That is why we sense a bit of strange pain when a talented actress like Natasha Richardson falls victim to a freak accident. So much of what they do feels immortal, but they are in the end human beings like the rest of us.

Of course it is their unique ability to portray our collective foibles and mortality that makes us feel close to them in the first place. That is why it can be a bit difficult to figure out whether we are grieving the actress or the characters she played. There are too many layers to sort out. So we move on, adding to the oddly growing sense of collective grief that an information-and-drama-intensive-world lays on our minds.