Actress Natasha Richardson has had a ski accident in Canada and is in critical condition in a Montreal hospital. Read about it below and see photos and a video.

Natasha Richardson

The Irish Times is reporting the actress Natasha Richardson has had a ski accident in Canada and has been hospitalized in critical condition with traumatic brain injury. In fact, they are reporting that she is ‘near death’.

The British actress was skiing at the Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec when the accident occurred this afternoon. She was taken to entre Hospitalier Laurentien and about 5 p.m. was transferred to Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal.

Richardson’s husband, Irish actor Liam Neeson, has been in Toronto, Canada filming his latest movie, ‘Chloe’. Its reported that he left the set immediately and flew to Montreal to be by his wife’s side.

Natasha Richardson is 45-years-old and is the daughter of famed British actress Vanessa Redgrave and the sister of actress Joely Richardson. She married 56-year-old Liam Neeson in 1994. The couple have two sons, Micheál Richard Antonio, 13-years-old, born June 22, 1995 13, and Daniel Jack, 12-years-old, born August 27, 1996.

Richardson has had a successful career in film and theater. She was scheduled to star with her mother on Broadway in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘A Little Night Music’.

Her acting career includes playing the title role in the 1988 movie ‘Patty Hearst’. She acted in Pat O’Connor’s “A Month in the Country” (1987), Roland Joffé’s “Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989) and “The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish” (1991), featuring Bob Hoskins and Jeff Goldblum. She won the London Evening Standard Award for Best Actress in 1990 for her roles in Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1990) and Schrader’s “The Comfort of Strangers” (1990). She won it again in 1994 for her work in ‘Widow’s Peak’ with Mia Farrow and Joan Plowright. She won the 1994 Best Actress Award at the Karlovy Vary Festival.

Other roles have included working with Jodie Foster and Liam Neeson in 1994’s ‘Nell’ and in 1998 with Dennis Quaid in ‘The Parent Trap’. In 2001 she stars in ‘Blow Dry’ and ‘Chelsea Walls’.

Update: 3-17-2009 11:30 p.m. ET: Natasha Richardson was flown to New York City apparently to be near home and to facilitate visiting from her family. Liam Neeson was on the flight with her from Montreal to New York. There have been many conflicting reports about her condition, most of it speculation.

There have been reports that she might have succumbed to ‘Talk and Die Syndrome’ which is explained as a closed head injury that exhibits no symptoms following the head injury until the cranial cavity fills with blood resulting in unconsciousness and probable death. This is more professionally known as an epidural hemorrhage.

Its been reported that she’s in New York so that her family, including her mother, Vanessa Redgrave and sister, Nip/Tuck’s Joely Richardson, can say goodbye to her. There are reports that after the family met with her the life support has been turned off. Other reports are that she is being kept in a medically induced coma until the brain swelling reduces.

The most recent reports are that she is indeed brain dead and that her life support systems will be disconnected once the family has had a chance to say goodbye. Others say that she has already died.

There are no official reports out about her condition one way or the other.

The accident was reported to be on the bunny slope. She’s not reported to have hit anything, but rather to have collapsed. She was removed from the slope and walked back to her hotel under her own strength. She was conscious, talking and joking around. About an hour later she reported not feeling well and having a headache. She was taken to the hospital and her condition continued to deteriorate.

Its still being reported as a ’ski accident’ even though there is no report that she hit anything. It seems more probably that she might have had an aneurysm or some other traumatic event that caused her collapse on the ski slope. However, that’s just speculation on my part.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing more in the days to come. Meanwhile, our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family.

Natasha Richardson – Photos