What a strange feeling, to lose someone you didn’t know but took for granted. Cinema-lovers all over the world took Natasha Richardson’s talent, her grace and her artistic courage for granted. Every time we sat down to a film in which she starred, you knew you were guaranteed a classy performance from one of England’s most underrated actresses.

It’s just so typically English that Natasha came from one of, if not the, most well respected acting families in the Western world, but never used it as an excuse for excess, or a chance to grab a front page. Look at Drew Barrymore and, a few years ago, Jane Fonda – two actresses who self-imploded as a result of their acting pedigree. Not Natasha. She stiffened her upper lip and got on with the business of acting. And boy could she act.

For lesbians there are a couple of roles that stick out in the mind. In Blow Dry (2001), she and Rachel Griffiths play lovers in that British oh-they-just-happen-to-be way. No fanfare, no issues, just lovers. She was also with ‘our Jodie’ in Nell, playing the maternal side of the doctor duo with hubbie Liam Neeson.

A lover of the character parts rather the leading roles, Natasha shirked attention, “part of the reason for moving to New York was the sense that it just didn’t matter how much work I did in England, I continued to be seen simply as a Redgrave. I did feel I could be who I am in New York and we all like to feel appreciated,” she told The Guardian in 2003.

Speaking of Redgraves, last year myself and a number of Gaelickers saw her mother in The Year of Magical Thinking as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Her mother was, as you would expect, spine-tinglingly wonderful. The story of the one-woman show is that of a woman who loses her husband and then her daughter. It’s been impossible to get it out of my head since hearing of Ms Regdrave’s loss.

Irish people feel like Natasha was one of ours as, while living in New York, she married Ireland’s own Liam Neeson and had two children. “I always felt too young and selfish to have children of my own. But when I met Liam, I knew I wanted to have his children.”

A selfless mother as well as a selfless actress then. Their loss cannot be imagined but the thoughts of million of film fans all over the world are with them.

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