Names of the famous and the accomplished have a way of descending liberally upon any conversation with Natasha Richardson.
Not because she drops them – far from it, you often have to pry from the easygoing actress exactly who she’s talking about – but because of her talented extended family.
When Richardson, in Denver to promote the Merchant-Ivory film “The White Countess,” says she hoped to meet up with her husband for some Western sightseeing, she means Liam Neeson. That would be Oscar-nominated Liam Neeson, now filming in New Mexico with Pierce Brosnan and others.
When the blond and smoky-voiced Richardson, 42, talks of making movies with family, she means her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, and aunt, Lynn Redgrave. Both play members of her family in “The White Countess.”
And when she speaks of a longtime friendship with “Countess” co-star Ralph Fiennes, the bond did not begin when they filmed a “bit of froth” called “Maid in Manhattan” in 2001. She knew Fiennes through her husband – from back when Fiennes and Neeson were filming a little movie called “Schindler’s List.”
Richardson said working with friends and family is a tremendous bonus when it involves a good script and a producing-directing team like Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. On set, she doesn’t try to ignore the fact that the faded Russian royalty she’s speaking to also happens to be her mother.
Family and acting don’t need to be separate, said Richardson, whose father was the late Tony Richardson, director of “Tom Jones” and “The Hotel New Hampshire,” among other films.
“When it’s happening at its best, both things are happening concurrently,” she said, sipping water at the Hotel Monaco. “You’re trying not to step outside and be an observer.”
She believes the warmth she feels for her mother deepened “The White Countess,” where Vanessa Redgrave plays the only member of an exiled family who is decent to Richardson’s character.
Ivory and the late Merchant are part of Richardson’s circle as well. They were “great friends” of her mother, and had always wanted to put the family in a script together. “The White Countess” tells the story of Richardson in tense 1930s Shanghai; she’s a former countess reduced to dance-hall girl and prostitute to support her daughter. Fiennes is a blind American nightclub owner who wants her melancholy beauty for his show.
Actors wanted to work with Merchant and Ivory (“A Room With a View,” “Remains of the Day,” “Howards End”) because they make lush period films “on a shoestring” and get every detail right, Richardson said. “It’s not about getting paid,” she noted with a laugh. The budgets hold little reward for the actors.
Richardson recalled one scene on the re-created streets of Shanghai. Cabs and rickshaws scurried about, soldiers and sailors jostled for space with businessmen and food vendors, and Richardson finished an emotionally devastating line.
An assistant yelled “Cut.”
Richardson slumped, exhausted, and looked to Ivory for praise.Ivory was pointing 20 yards back at an extra, yelling, “We have the wrong belt buckle on that person over there!”
Richardson looks much younger in person than the wan countess of her latest movie. She lives with Neeson and their two boys, 9 and 10, in New York, having recently finished a run as Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
Richardson was offered the role long ago, but felt she was too young to do it well.
“But in the past few years, I had been tracking the rights. I felt I knew that woman inside and out,” she said. In her own life, she said, she chooses to be the caregiver for Neeson and her boys, and doesn’t indulge in Blanche’s dreamy self-delusion.
“Maybe I get to show that kind of vulnerability in my work,” said Richardson, who has done extensive stage work and won a Tony in 1998 for “Cabaret.”
Richardson may be best known to American movie audiences as Mrs. Parent Trap, having starred in the 1998 remake with Dennis Quaid and Lindsay Lohan. She said her best memories of that shoot were the fabulous locations, from London’s high society to Napa Valley vineyards and Orange County yacht clubs.
Movie material does not come her way by the truckload, she admits. She’ll keep taking attractive roles when they appear, and is open to TV movies.
But no TV series. Between family and flying when necessary for film shots, she couldn’t manage the schedule’s rigor.
“I like my home life,” Richardson said. “And I like being a gypsy.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
