In 'Countess,' she acts with her famous mother, aunt
Natasha Richardson, who stars in the new -- and final -- Merchant Ivory film ''The White Countess," has inherited much from her mother, Vanessa Redgrave.
There's the beauty -- fine features, wide, doe eyes -- and husky voice that combine to give her a delicate, refined presence.
There's the private life lived as part of a theater couple: Richardson, 42, is married to Liam Neeson, with whom she has two young sons, 10-year-old Micheal (''it's written in the Gaelic way, and he was named after Michael Collins and Michael Redgrave, my grandfather," says Richardson) and 9-year-old Daniel (''named after Father Daniel Berrigan," who officiated at the marriage of Richardson and Neeson).
And there's the career built onstage as much as on-screen. The mother and daughter worked together on stage back when Richardson was 22, in a London production of Chekhov's ''The Seagull."
''I was scared and very intimidated," Richardson says during a recent conversation in Boston. She remembers watching in awe as her mother took command at their first rehearsal. ''She just threw herself in at the deep end, like an abstract artist who's painting big, bold stripes of color. I realized, watching her, that if you do dive into the deep end, all you have to do is swim to the shallow end. Back then I was the opposite way around, doing baby steps toward the deep end."
She learned. Richardson has gone on to do standout work on Broadway, including this past summer's turn as Blanche DuBois in ''A Streetcar Named Desire" and her 1998 performance as Sally Bowles in ''Cabaret," for which she won a Tony Award. On film she has waltzed through froth such as ''The Parent Trap" -- in which she played mom to Lindsay Lohan -- and knuckled down to harrowing work, including ''Patty Hearst" and ''The Handmaid's Tale."
In ''The White Countess," which opens Friday, Richardson settles back in the aristocratic, stylized world of 1930s China, playing an upper-class Russian emigre eking out a living in Shanghai. Costar Ralph Fiennes is a US diplomat who opens a nightclub where Richardson, the ''white countess," becomes hostess.
Vanessa Redgrave and her sister, Lynn Redgrave, play fellow emigres. It's the first time Richardson has performed with her mother since ''The Seagull," and the first time ever with her aunt.
Robert Emmet Long, author of ''The Films of Merchant Ivory" and 2005's ''James Ivory in Conversation," notes that Vanessa Redgrave has long been a favorite of the filmmakers, starring in their ''The Bostonians," ''The Ballad of the Sad Café," and ''Howards End." The teaming up of the three women on screen is, he says, ''a grand bringing together of all these Redgraves and Richardsons."
''The White Countess" is the last chapter in the long professional and personal partnership of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant: Merchant, who produced their films, died last May of what was reported to be complications from ulcer surgery. The two men had collaborated on films since 1961 and were life partners as well.
''Ismail was always very open and enthusiastic -- entirely different from Jim, who's very restrained," says Richardson. ''Like chalk and cheese. You can see why it was a sort of perfect marriage."
Making the movie was difficult. The original screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro, whose novel ''Remains of the Day" was the basis of one of Merchant and Ivory's biggest films, imagined a huge scale feature. The film was shot in China in late 2004 for what Richardson says was between $15 million and $20 million.
''The struggle to keep this film going -- losing financing left and right -- really took a toll on Ismail's health," says Richardson. ''I mean, you could just see him sort of turning gray."
''He shouldn't have died of what he died of," she says. ''I think that he'd just been beaten up by this movie."
The film is Richardson's second in recent years playing opposite Fiennes, who she calls ''one of my dear, best friends" (she's known him since he did ''Schindler's List" with Neeson). In ''Maid in Manhattan" she and Fiennes flirted, although it was Jennifer Lopez who won his heart. In ''The White Countess" she wins his heart, although they manage barely a kiss.
Maybe next time she and Fiennes will, you know. . .
''Get it on?" Richardson asks, with a big laugh. ''Well, that would be good. I did try to convince them to shoot us having a real, romantic kiss, but I think Ralph and Jim [Ivory, the film's director] firmly believed that that was one of the best things about the story, that it never tips into that romantic cliche. But I'm a hopeless romantic, so I was longing for the payoff, the big kiss." (So might audiences who see the movie poster featuring the two in a sensual lip-lock.)
For all that Richardson has inherited from her mother, though, she says that her father was her mentor. Tony Richardson was a major player in the film and theater world, winning an Academy Award in 1963 for directing ''Tom Jones" and frequently directing stage productions. He and Redgrave divorced when Natasha and her younger sister Joely were girls, and he died in 1991 of complications from AIDS.
''He was terrifyingly truthful," Richardson says. ''And his faith in me gave me a sense of belief in myself, which I think I sort of lost for a while after his death. Because my mom. . . with all her children, they can do no wrong. And actually it's much more helpful to have someone like my father who says, 'No, that's not good enough.' Then when he says 'Yeah, that is really great,' you know it means something."
As a teenager, Natasha would visit her father in Los Angeles during breaks from her London schools -- the French Lycée, St. Paul's Girls' School, the Central School of Speech and Drama. At Central, she took classes like ''Animal Study," where she would observe an animal and become it in class. (She picked a potoroo, ''the most obscure animal I could find" -- it's a rat-like kangaroo -- ''and spent most of my time in the zoo cafe drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. When the teacher came around I would sort of look at my hand and do a hand movement. It just didn't seem to me to be my way into playing the part.")
For ''The White Countess," Richardson talked to Russians and read Russian poetry and listened to Russian music. ''I've always been aware how Russian people complain of English actors doing Chekhov," says Richardson. ''They say, 'They're far too restrained; they don't have that understanding of what the real Russian soul is,' and I thought, 'Well, what is the real Russian soul?" She tried to capture ''that sense of loneliness and homesickness and emotions being very close to the surface -- you know, you can cry one moment and laugh the next -- and a sense of endurance."
Ivory had to complete the post-production for the film in the months that followed Merchant's death. ''He was in such a fragile state," says Richardson. ''They were very difficult times, but he's very stalwart."
Like the characters in the film. ''I found this [Russian] word that I put in one of the scenes: nichevo," says Richardson. ''It was something that a lot of these girls at that time used to say, meaning 'However bad it is, we carry on.' Nichevo -- I think it's quite a good mantra for life, actually."