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Actor Liam Neeson has told of his grief over the tragic death of his actress wife Natasha Richardson in a freak skiing accident five years ago.
Neeson, 61, whose latest film Non Stop is due to open on Feb 28, reveals his pain during an emotional interview with CBS’s Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes.
Speaking to Anderson Cooper on the 60 Minutes programme, he recalls the moment he realised she would not recover.
“She was on life support… I went in to her and I told her I loved her, said ‘Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this, you’ve banged your head’,” he says.
“She and I had made a pact, if any of us got into a vegetative state that we’d pull the plug. That was my immediate thought, ‘OK, these tubes have to go. She’s gone’.”
Neeson says it still feels as though his wife’s death was “never real”.
“It still kind of isn’t,” he says. “There’s periods now in our New York residence when I hear the door opening, especially the first couple of years… any time I hear that door opening, I still think I’m going to hear her.
“It hits you. It’s like a wave. You just get this profound feeling of instability… the earth isn’t stable any more and then it passes and it becomes more infrequent – but I still get it sometimes.”
The Taken star, who had kept his wife on life support for a short time to allow her family and friends to say goodbye, reveals that in a sense she lives on in three other people after three of her organs were donated.
He says his wife is “keeping three people alive at the moment”.
“Her heart, her kidneys and her liver,” he says.
“It’s terrific and I think she would be very thrilled and pleased by that,” he tells Cooper.
Cooper and 60 Minutes cameras also go back to Neeson’s home town of Ballymena where the actor recalls the sectarian violence of the day and visit the grammar school where he played his first stage role.
Neeson’s action thriller Non Stop premieres next week.
He says his age is beginning to contrast sharply with his role.
“I’m 61 years of age, man, you know? Going around, fighting these guys, yeah, I feel a wee bit embarrassed, you know?” he says.
Agencies/Canadajournal
