By Christopher Wallenberg

Award-winning actress Natasha Richardson discusses her legendary lineage, her incredible career, and her acclaimed turn in the final Merchant-Ivory film The White Countess.

Although her mom is Oscar, Tony, and Emmy award-winning actress Vanessa Redgrave, her father the late Academy Award-winning bisexual director Tony Richardson, her aunt fellow stage and screen luminary Lynn Redgrave, and her grandfather was British acting legend Sir Michael Redgrave, don't call Natasha Richardson showbiz royalty. "Whenever I hear those words -- royalty or dynasty -- attached to us, I'm afraid people think that we come from this aristocratic background. But, actually, we come from a very bohemian, artistic family. Even if my grandmother was a very classy lady, there isn't an aristocratic bone in any of our bodies," laughs the radiant Richardson, sitting inside a hotel suite in midtown Manhattan.

Although she may resist the "Hollywood royalty" designation, her latest big screen role, in the new Merchant-Ivory flick, The White Countess, has taught her a thing or two about the patrician elite. She does, after all, play an exiled Russian countess struggling to survive with her downtrodden former czarist family in a 1930s Shanghai tenement.

Dressed in a stylishly casual cardigan over a low-cut blouse, her pale British skin tanned a golden brown and bouncing blond ringlets cascading down to her shoulders, Richardson is the picture of elegant sophistication. The 42-year-old actress is simply gorgeous in person and leaves this observer wondering why she, too, isn't an A-list star like her husband, the ubiquitous Liam Neeson.

Perhaps it's because she tends to prefer roles that plumb the deepest recesses of the human heart instead of glossy romantic comedies. In fact, she's made a career out of playing dark, disturbed yet passionate figures, particularly on the stage. These include the title role in the London and Broadway productions of Anna Christie (in which she met and fell in love with Neeson), Sally Bowles in the 1998 revival of Cabaret (for which she won the Tony award for Best Actress), and aging Southern belle Blanche in last year's Broadway run of A Streetcar Named Desire.

On film, she's played Frankenstein author Mary Shelley in Ken Russell's Gothic, famous brainwashed kidnapping victim Patty Hearst in the eponymous Paul Schrader film, and rape victim Kate in the big screen adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale.

In The White Countess, she plays another tormented soul, and the film marks the actress' first time working with the Merchant-Ivory team, the gay filmmaking duo who had been partners in work and life for more than 40 years prior to Merchant's death last spring. In the film, Richardson's character, Sofia, is drawn to blind former diplomat Todd Jackson (played by family friend Ralph Fiennes). Distraught over the deaths of his wife and children, Jackson enlists Sofia's help in opening an idealized nightclub where he can shut out the chaos of the outside world. He makes the countess the centerpiece of his establishment, but doesn't allow himself to get too close to her. Meanwhile, Sofia, a widow and mother of young Katya, helps support her dead husband's family as the nightclub hostess, yet is treated with disdain by them because of her occupation.

The actress says she drew on the Chekhovian undercurrents that run through a typical Merchant-Ivory film to find inspiration for the character. "Apart from an authentic Russian accent, what I wanted to give her was a real Russian soul and a real Russian spirit."

"I felt an immediate empathy with this character," she continues. "She's a woman of real strength and grace. But she has virtually no self-esteem because she has no support system. I can imagine only too well the horror and pain of losing everything -- your husband, your homeland, your home, and your stature. And being forced to live as a refugee in a foreign country."

Richardson, who grew up in England but now lives in New York, says she can relate to her character's loss of roots. "I think one of the great things about my upbringing was that it was partly here, but mostly in England and a lot in Europe. So I felt comfortable in a lot of countries. But at the same time, I never feel like I really belong anywhere. Sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's rather uneasy."

As an actress, though, Richardson is used to working in uncertain circumstances in faraway lands. And White Countess, which was shot on location in China, was nothing if not difficult. The actress says the presence of familiar faces helped make the grueling shoot a little easier. Those familiar faces included both her mother and aunt, who were cast in key roles, playing ramshackle royal relatives.

Mom Vanessa, having earned Oscar nominations for two previous Merchant-Ivory films (The Bostonians and Howard's End), even had some words of caution for her daughter before the shoot began. "She said, 'Tasha, I should tell you. Jim [Ivory] is not a man of effusive praise. He's not going to say: That was great. In fact he won't say anything at all. But he will say when something's not right. And you should trust him because he's always correct about it.' So I'm glad I knew that because otherwise I would have been a basket case of insecurity."

Still, Richardson had absolute trust and faith in the Merchant-Ivory team. But the hardest part for everyone was Merchant's death last spring, not long after White Countess had wrapped. "He was so warm and such a life force. It's still kind of unbelievable that he's not going to walk in the room," says the actress. "I think this film, in particular, took a great toll on his health ... But I have no right to get upset about it because it's so much harder for Jim. I just feel really lucky that I was able to be in a Merchant-Ivory film and be part of that history and legacy that Ismail left."

With the holidays around the corner, Richardson says she's looking forward to spending time with her family. Neeson, who is shooting a new film with Pierce Brosnan, will return home. And the actress says they plan to bring their two young sons to see Dad in his role as lion king Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia. "I promised Liam that we'd wait until he got back, so we're going on the day after Christmas."

As for her Hollywood marriage, Richardson is reluctant to discuss how the couple has made the relationship work for more than a decade despite the stresses of their profession. "I get so uncomfortable being put in the position of doling out advice. Like we're the template for happy marriage or something," she says, getting up from her seat and knocking on a nearby wooden banister. "Just keep wishing us luck and we'll keep talking to and loving each other."