[Inaugurating a new series about movies that are not currently available on home video, and why this sucks.]

Patty Hearst wasn't Natasha Richardson's first movie, but it did mark the first time that the then-twenty-five-year-old actress had the lead role in a feature film. It also marked the first time that she was asked to pass for American, an ability that can make or break an English performer who hopes to make it in the international marketplace. In fact, she was asked to pass for an actual American, in a film based on Hearst's own account of her 1974 abduction by the crackpot "revolutionary" group the SLA and that event's aftermath--a film that Hearst herself, who posed for publicity photos with her movie doppelganger, had some input on. But no pressure! The director Paul Schrader made the movie on a tight budget at a time when he was coming off some expensive failures; much of the first half is set in the house where Hearst was kept prisoner. In fact, because of Schrader's decision to tell the story from Hearst's point of view, a fair amount of it is set in the dark closet where she was locked until she began parroting the SLA members' slogans and convinced them that she was ready to switch sides and become a guerrilla soldier. The strategy means that Richardson has to not just carry the picture but to supply its heart and soul, while remaining essentially mysterious to the audience: as Patty goes from being helpless, whimpering victim to fugitive from justice, you stare at her, trying to figure out where her head is at. It isn't until the end, when she's behind bars and plotting out how best to spin her story, that it's fully clear that, up to that point, she hasn't really known herself.

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Natasha Richardson, who has died, at 45, after a well-reported accident on a Canadian ski resort, was born into it. Natasha, like her sister Joely, was the daughter of the director Tony Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave (who in turn was the sister of Lynn Redgrave and the daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson). Natasha made her movie debut at four in her father's 1968 The Charge of the Light Brigade, in which her mother played the female lead. After studying at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, Richardson began her career in earnest at the Old Vic, where she played such roles as Ophelia and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1986, she appeared with her mother in a production of Chekhov's The Seagull. Although a famous name can help someone get a foot in the door in the entertainment business, it is not automatically a guarantee of a successful career, something that could be attested to by any number of people who probably owe me a dinner for not mentioning their names. But by the time Richardson made her mature movie debut, playing Mary Shelley in Ken Russell's 1986 Gothic, it was clear that she had the talent to back it up. Her first real chance to show what she could do on-screen came in 1988, when Paul Schrader cast her in the difficult title role of Patty Hearst. In her review in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote that Richardson had "been handed a big unwritten role" and added, "She feels her way into it, and she fills it" and "always has something in reserve--you keep waiting for what she may show you next."

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Natasha Richardson is reportedly in critical condition after being hospitalized after a skiing accident. The 45-year-old actress, part of a distinguished and sprawling theatrical dynasty that includes her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, as well as her sister Joely Richardson, aunt Lynn Redgrave, and her grandfather, the legendary Michael Redgrave, was rushed to Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal with what reports have described as a serious injury to the brain. Redgrave's husband, Liam Neeson, who was in Toronto, working on Atom Egoyan's Chloe, has left the set of that film to be at her side. A rep for that film issued a statement saying that "We do not have any details at this time but we hope for the best and our thoughts and prayers are with Natasha and Liam and their family."

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