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Critic’s Notebook
Natasha Richardson and the Redgrave Dynasty
The
sudden death of a famous artist in his or her prime is always sad and
unsettling, a reminder that life is an easily breakable possession even
for those who abide in the waiting room of immortality, which is to say
celebrity. But the death of Natasha Richardson last week, after a skiing accident in Canada, struck many with
particular force because Ms. Richardson was not merely a well-known
actress but also a member of a great British theatrical dynasty.
Talent
often runs in the blood, and there is certainly no shortage of actors
who beget actors. In New York this spring, you could see
second-generation talent in abundance onstage, with the daughters of Meryl Streep, Jill Clayburgh and Phylicia Rashad, as well as the son of Tom Hanks,
giving notable performances on Broadway and off. They join a long list
ofperformers who have drawn from the wellspring of their DNA to forge
careers in movies or theater. In some cases — I’ll name no names — it
seems merely a matter of capitalizing on and then coasting on the
access afforded by being the son or daughter of a star. But there is
unquestionably a gene for performing that can either be developed or
lie dormant.
And yet the Redgraves are unique, standing apart as
a family of acting artists of incomparable integrity and achievement in
the 20th century. The great Barrymores, deliciously lampooned in the
comedy “The Royal Family” by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, are the most famous American acting dynasty. But the
three most luminous names of the clan — Ethel, John and Lionel — were
of the same generation. John’s son, John Drew Barrymore, and daughter
Diana both had minor acting careers, but both inherited their father’s
capacious bent for self-destruction. Diana died of an overdose at age
38. John Drew made various television and film appearances, but
eventually became a derelict and was being supported by his daughter,
the appealing movie star Drew Barrymore, until he died in 2004.
The
Fonda family certainly provides a more inspiring — not to mention
healthy — example, with significant achievement spanning three
generations on film, from Henry through Jane and Peter and on to
Peter’s daughter Bridget. But the Redgraves remain a singular example
of a family whose dedication to the art of acting far outshone their
status as celebrities, perhaps because in England acting is still
considered above all a discipline requiring hard study and careful
apprenticeship — as well as a healthy taste for challenge — not merely
a convenient expressway to riches and fame, an irresistible lure if you
happen to possess the E-ZPass of a celebrity parent.
Michael Redgrave,
the paterfamilias, was the son of acting parents and a great classical
actor whose range was immense. For proof check out the scintillating
movie version of “The Importance of Being Earnest” and the 1945 horror
omnibus “Dead of Night,” in which he is tremendously creepy as an
unhinged ventriloquist. He met his wife, Rachel Kempson, while they
were playing rep in Liverpool. She had attended the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art and went on to a distinguished career, although it was
largely eclipsed by those of her husband and two daughters, Vanessa and
Lynn.
Lynn and Vanessa both studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama, as did Ms. Richardson a couple of decades later. Corin Redgrave,
the brother of Lynn and Vanessa, also has had a major stage career in
England, and is the father of yet another notable actor in the family,
Jemma Redgrave.
Although Vanessa, Lynn and Ms. Richardson all had
significant movie careers, the fertility of the family talent surely is
linked to their dedication to the stage, which demands a special
discipline, a raft of technical skills that cannot be mediated by the
ministrations of directors and cinematographers. The dailiness of stage
acting, I imagine, may have helped keep the family from disintegrating
under the onslaught of media attention that has dogged many of them
since birth. The rigorous discipline of stage work — you’re punching a
clock, after a fashion, only it’s set at curtain time — mirrors the
grind of more mundane lives, the trudging pace that may deaden the
spirit at times but also helps us fight through the sudden batterings
of misfortune that every life has.
Ms. Richardson once said that
she moved to New York to escape the “Redgrave baggage” — meaning the
devouring attention of the country’s news media, always looking to
undermine or interrogate those who find success in any field,
particularly those who are perceived to have come by it more by the
chance of a lucky birth than by personal achievement. Both Vanessa Redgrave and Corin Redgrave have endured periods when their outspoken political
views made it hard for them to get work. But the actors in the family
have all managed to remain sharp-minded stewards of their talents,
rarely if ever abusing their fame for the spoils it can bring or
allowing personal trauma to derail their absorption in their craft.
All
families undergo periods of estrangement and conflict, and Ms.
Richardson has spoken of having an unsettled childhood (her father, the
director Tony Richardson,
was bisexual and died of AIDS in 1991). But members of the family
worked together regularly on film and on the stage. Vanessa Redgrave
appeared with her daughter Natasha onstage in “The Seagull” and more
recently in a benefit staging of “A Little Night Music”; alongside Lynn
in a (rather unfortunate) television remake of “Whatever Happened to
Baby Jane?”; with her brother onstage in Chekhov and Coward; and with
her other daughter, Joely Richardson,
on the television series “Nip/Tuck.” All of which suggests that fellow
feeling among the Redgraves was never corrupted by the pressures of
envy or the natural antipathies thatarise in any high-achieving family.
The
freakish nature of Ms. Richardson’s death has already inspired ghoulish
tabloid commentary on the curses that seem to descend upon famous
families in showbiz or politics. It’s absurd, of course. Not to get all
Beckett on you, but life itself is a cursed thing, fated to end before
all promise is fulfilled.