Liam Neeson sat down with Esquire to promote his new movie Taken and ended up opening up about Natasha Richardson’s death in a really honest and heart wrenching interview:

“I’d been to Montreal maybe twice before. And for some reason, I thought the city’s this size.” He holds his hands out in front of him then, cupped like he is drinking water.

“I thought that it was this little comfortable little city,” he says. “And for some reason, I thought the hospital that I was in a taxi racing toward was gonna be a nice little hospital, about twice the size of this restaurant. But it was this huge, glassy, black place. A Dickensian place, Tom.

“I walked into the emergency — it’s like seventy, eighty people, broken arms, black eyes, all that — and for the first time in years, nobody recognizes me. Not the nurses. The patients. No one. And I’ve come all this way, and they won’t let me see her. And I’m looking past them, starting to push — I’m like, Fuck, I know my wife’s back there someplace. I pull out a cell phone — and a security guard comes up, starts saying, ‘Sorry, sir, you can’t use that in here,’ and I’m about to ask him if he knew me, when he disappears to answer a phone call or something. So I went outside. It’s freezing cold, and I thought, What am I gonna do? How am I going to get past the security?

“And I see two nurses, ladies, having a cigarette. I walk up, and luckily one of them recognizes me. And I’ll tell you, I was so fucking grateful — for the first time in I don’t know how long — to be recognized. And this one, she says, ‘Go in that back door there.’ She points me to it. ‘Make a left. She’s in a room there.’ So I get there, just in time. And all these young doctors, who look all of eighteen years of age, they tell me the worst.” He purses his lips, mouth dry. “The worst.”

This is the point where he stops again. He blinks back tears, takes a long look at the table across from us, where members of Natasha Richardson’s extended family are, coincidentally, having lunch in this same restaurant. (He and Natasha, this was their place, so it’s only a mild coincidence.) I wait. Again, I tell him how sorry I am. Neeson nods.

He went back to shooting Chloe, after the funeral. “I just think I was still in a bit of shock,” he says. “But it’s kind of a no-brainer to go back to that work. It’s a wee bit of a blur, but I know the tragedy hadn’t just really smacked me yet.”

Now the no-brainer is staying with the work, the good work, as it piles up on him. “I think I survived by running away some. Running away to work. Listen, I know how old I am and that I’m just a shoulder injury from losing roles like the one in Taken. So I stay with the training, I stay with the work. It’s easy enough to plan jobs, to plan a lot of work. That’s effective. But that’s the weird thing about grief. You can’t prepare for it. You think you’re gonna cry and get it over with. You make those plans, but they never work.

“It hits you in the middle of the night — well, it hits me in the middle of the night. I’m out walking. I’m feeling quite content. And it’s like suddenly, boom. It’s like you’ve just done that in your chest.” Here Neeson reaches out and twists both hands in opposite directions, like he’s corkscrewing two ends of a soda can, reaches toward me so it’s clear: This is in his chest. He shakes his head at the thought of this one thing, this single hideous bead on the necklace of his life. He speaks as if he were regarding its cruelty anew, though this too cannot be. He’s too smart to feel singled out by what happened to his wife. Her death, with its painfully curious timeline — the simple fall, her apparent clearheadedness, followed by the swift, merciless brain hemorrhage? Brutal and extraordinary. Neeson’s experience at the hospital — the mix-up at reception, the chaos of the ER, the arrival of the security guard? Vivid and, at the same time, banal. Just another hospital story; everyone has them. This doesn’t mean they don’t hurt. When he says, “It’s just extraordinary,” Neeson is referring to the persistent depth of pain, the ruinous visitations of grief, even now, two years later. That stuff is all his very own.

That seriously makes me tear up.

(pic & quote: Esquire)

(Pic: blog.zap2it.com)

I am probably just opening a can of worms here but I saw this post on Celebitchy and needed some input.  Apparently, Liam Neeson has a new girlfriend.  Now, if you recall, his wife, Natasha Richardson, died after falling and hitting her head at a ski resort in March 2009.  They were married for 15 years.

Ok, my immediate reaction was “wow, he has already moved on?”.   I guess its been over a year since she passed.  I can’t imagine loosing my spouse at all, let alone so unexpectedly, but how long is long enough to mourn a spouse?  How long is good enough before you can move on?

Tanya: You know, I think that is probably something that is different for each and every one of us. If Liam Neeson is ready to move on let’s let him.

What better way to celebrate than with some Irish celebs?

• Colin Farrell
• Ra’s al Ghul (aka Liam Neeson)
• Scarecrow (aka Cillian Murphy)
• Pierce Brosnan (I totally thought he was English)
• Jonathan Rhys-Meyers

And Christina Ricci is not Irish but she is pretty wasted in this photo so it counts.

Stacey: St. Patty’s Day!  Woot!  Did I ever tell you about the time that for about a year I thought my birthday was St. Patrick’s Day?  Not sure how I got that in my head, but I did, and my mom had to correct me.  Weird right? 

Anyways, since I am part Irish, I will be celebrating by wearing green and getting drunk.  In fact, I am drunk right now.  Actually, that’s not true, but wouldn’t it be better if I were?  And if I could celebrate with Colin Farrell? 

PS.  Did you have to pick the one picture were JRM looks like a terrible 70′s porn star?

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