Early in the romantic comedy, Love Actually, which I commend to you in the event you have never seen it, the character played by the great actor Liam Neeson performs a scene where he is delivering the eulogy for his fictional wife, who has all too prematurely passed on.
Tonight's news conveys the tragic headline that in his real life, Neeson has actually lost his real wife, Natasha Richardson, at the ever-so tender of age 45, in a tragic skiing accident.
I rarely write here about Hollywood, where I worked for years, but when I do, it always involves my experiences with the real people whose real lives I was privileged to share, even briefly. In that context, I regret that I never met Liam Neeson.
Because something about the way he acts tells me he will not be faking any kind of emotion as he buries his real wife in these coming days, much as how he "buried" his fictional wife in that movie.
While it is true that art imitates life, it is invariably tragic when life imitates art, forcing the artist to live through a pain he only had to previously fake on screen. My heart goes out to the real man tonight, wherever he is, and however alone in his grief he may feel.
Surely he will realize, as his character eventually learned in Love Actually, that a new day will indeed dawn, and love itself, actually, will return to him. Loss, and grief, however unbearable, yield new life. That is the way of our world, and as my farmer friends always said, back home in Michigan: "After the rain, the sun will shine."
May that sun shine on Liam Neeson and his sons, who have lost a wife and a mother, as well on all people mourning their loved ones tonight, March 18th, 2009.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment