Actress Natasha Richardson arrives with her husband, Liam Neeson, to present an award at the Conde Nast Traveler's annual readers choice award show in New York on Oct. 16, 2006. Richardson, a member of Britain's Redgrave theatrical dynasty, was critically injured while skiing at a resort near Montreal on Monday. Photograph by: Lucas Jackson, Reuters files
NEW YORK — Family and friends gathered Wednesday at a Manhattan hospital to say "goodbye" to actress Natasha Richardson, a star of one of Britain's most prominent acting families, who suffered an apparently fatal head injury in a skiing accident in Quebec.
Richardson's actor husband, Liam Neeson, was at her bedside after accompanying her on the flight from Canada Tuesday, as was her mother, legendary actress Vanessa Redgrave.
Among grief-struck visitors was actress Lauren Bacall, who attended the couple's 1994 wedding at their white clapboard farmhouse in rural Millbrook, 140 kilometres north of New York City.
Actress Meryl Streep and author Joan Didion also dropped by.
"There is no chance," a family friend told People magazine. "It is a fact that her heart is beating, but she is brain-dead."
New York celebrity columnist Liz Smith said later Wednesday that doctors had taken Richardson off life support, city media reported.
The Tony Award-winning actress suffered what appeared to be a minor fall during a private skiing lesson Monday on a meandering beginner's trail at Mont Tremblant, Que. But she later developed a severe headache.
Neurosurgeons say that the circumstances of her head injury suggest that she should have sought medical attention right away.
"There is a percentage of people who seem to have a relatively trivial injury but they will end up really deteriorating, even becoming comatose and some even will die," said Judith Marcoux, a neurosurgeon at the Montreal General Hospital.
"It is treatable, but the sooner the better. We know that when patients are operated on very early — when they are still conscious — they tend to do extremely well. But when they are already deeply comatose, their outcome is much less guaranteed."
Without knowing the exact circumstances of Richardson's injury, experts suggested to the Montreal Gazette that she probably suffered from an epidural hematoma. This happens when blood gathers between the dura mater — the tough outer membrane of the brain — and the skull, placing the brain under increasing pressure.
"The brain is soft and it's protected inside of the skull," Marcoux explained. "If we bleed in the abdomen, we can bleed a litre and it won't compress the gut. But if you bleed inside of our head, the skull is not expandable."
Alain Ptito, an associate professor of neurosurgery at McGill University, said a brain injury can be complicated by a pre-existing condition. If a patient is on blood-thinning medication, the risk of a brain hemorrhage is much greater.
Other possibilities are that Richardson sustained a subdural hematoma — a bleeding within the dura mater, or that she twisted the vertebral artery in her neck, momentarily depriving her brain of oxygen.
Neeson, who had been on a film shoot in Toronto, rushed to join her as she was hospitalized in Montreal's Hopital du Sacre-Coeur.
It was there, friends have said, that doctors told Neeson there was little hope she would regain brain function.
It is believed the subsequent flight back to New York, where the couple has an apartment in Manhattan's Upper West Side, was made largely for the benefit of Neeson and Richardson's boys, Daniel, 12, and Michael, 13.
The youngsters spent much of Wednesday at the family apartment, but the night before had visited their mother at her bedside in Manhattan's Lenox Hill hospital.
Michael arrived at about 8:45 p.m. with his maternal grandmother, who also lives in New York. Vanessa Redgrave arrived wearing a grey head scarf, and walked with a cane.
Daniel arrived about an hour later, accompanied by his mother's aunt, actress Lynn Redgrave, and her sister Joely Richardson, 44, a TV actress who currently stars in Nip/Tuck.
The entire group, except Neeson and Vanessa Redgrave left the hospital at about midnight, exiting through a frosted glass-panelled door that prevented the throng of photographers on the pavement outside from snapping their approach.
The family split time between their Manhattan apartment and the farm in Millbrook, near to where Neeson suffered a broken pelvis nine years ago when he collided with a deer while riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Radio show host Howard Stern and TV talk king Regis Philbin were among Neeson and Richardson's celebrity neighbours who expressed shock at how a simple skiing accident could have such tragic consequences.
Another neighbour, real-estate broker Adrienne Cleere, turned up at the hospital where she recalled meeting the couple at charity events. She said she found them "family-oriented and caring, as opposed to most celebrities."
Richardson, whose late father was Oscar-winning director Tony Richardson, won her Tony in 1998 for playing Sally Bowles in Cabaret. Her performance propelled her to international stardom in her own right.
She also met Neeson on Broadway when they starred together in Anna Christie.
Richardson became known by many younger moviegoers for her role as Lindsay Lohan's mother in the 1998 remake of Disney's The parent Trap.
She was a recent guest judge in the Bravo TV show Top Chef, and was also preparing to co-star with her mother in a Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music.
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Richardson at the UK premiere of ''The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian''. According to conflicting reports, British actress Natasha Richardson is brain dead following a severe head injury from a skiing accident on Monday. The New York Post reported that friends of Richardson said she "was brain dead", after earlier reporting that she was "dead". They later issued a correction which said she was brain dead. Other media reports say that her brain is severely swollen. Fox News Channel also reports Richardson as brain dead.

Richardson was transported by plane from Sacré-Coeur Hospital in Montreal, Canada to a care facility in New York City in the United States. She remains in very critical condition and reports say she is not likely to survive. Once in the U.S., she will be taken off life support.

Richardson, 45, was taking a private skiing lesson in Mont-Tremblant in Quebec when reports say she fell, hitting her head. Despite the fall, witnesses say she did not appear to have been seriously injured. An hour after the fall and after she returned to her hotel room, Richardson began to feel ill and was taken to a local hospital. She was later transported to Sacré-Coeur Hospital.

"She was talking and making jokes and there was no sign of any apparent injury. She said she was okay and didn't want to go to hospital or see a doctor. About an hour later she said she was not feeling that good after all. She said she had a headache. They agreed to dial 911 and an ambulance came to take her away," Mont-Tremblant resort ski station spokeswoman Catherine Lacasse to The Daily Telegraph.

Richardson's husband, actor Liam Neeson, has left Toronto where he was filming a movie and will be with Natasha when she arrives in the U.S.. He was acting in the movie 'Chloe', which was being filmed in the area. Both were staying at the resort in Mont-Tremblant. The couple have two children who were also staying with them, Daniel Jack age 12 and Micheal Richard Antonio age 13. They are said to have been skiing with their mother when she fell.

"Liam Neeson left the Toronto set immediately to fly to Montreal upon news of his wife’s accident. 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," said spokespeople for Neeson in a statement to the press. Richardson's family and spokespeople are expected to issue a statement sometime after she arrives in New York City.