Meet the 'nepo babies' in their 80s who lead Hollywood's golden age

Daily Mail​

5 hours ago

'Nepo' babies have stolen the spotlight in recent years, but the children of stars carving careers in the entertainment world is as old as Hollywood itself.
From Jane Fonda, 87, to Jamie Lee Curtis, 66, the offspring of the famous have fought to escape the shadows of their famous parents.
Some have been more successful than others, as DailyMail.com found out...
Jane Fonda, 87
Jane Fonda was a creature of Hollywood from the cradle as the daughter of Henry Fonda, one of the most acclaimed star actors of his generation.
The pair had a fraught personal relationship thanks to his emotional remoteness, but Jane has always expressed admiration for Henry's work in movies like 12 Angry Men and The Grapes of Wrath.
She made her stage debut as a teenager alongside her father in a play called The Male Animal, and then in 1960 at the age of 23 she acted in her first movie Tall Story, igniting a dazzling film career that is still going strong.
Her work has ranged from comic romps like Barbarella, 9 To 5 and Fun With Dick And Jane to Oscar-winning dramatic performances in Klute and Coming Home.
Jane leveraged her acting success to become one of the early movie star producers, not only on Coming Home and 9 To 5 but also on the hit thriller The China Syndrome.
She was equally well-known as a fiery and polarizing political activist, earning lifelong notoriety as 'Hanoi Jane' after she was photographed on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun that was used against the Americans.
Jane went on Radio Hanoi and intimated that U.S. serviceman should disobey their orders, and when she returned home she declared that the torture of American prisoners of war was 'understandable,' naming her only son after a Viet Cong militant who had attempted to assassinate a U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Tensions: The pair had a fraught relationship thanks to his emotional remoteness, but Jane has always expressed admiration for Henry's work in movies like 12 Angry Men; the pair are pictured 1979
Decades on, she confessed that at the height of her anti-war political activity she was guzzling the stimulant Dexedrine while seesawing between anorexia and bulimia.
In the 1980s she reinvented herself as the queen of the workout video, with her original exercise tape becoming the bestselling VHS of all time.
In the 1990s she acquired yet another new image as the facelifted trophy wife of billionaire media mogul Ted Turner - and then in the 2000s she left him and resumed her movie career with a blockbuster turn opposite Jennifer Lopez in Monster-in-Law, launching a comeback that has lasted to this day.
Nevertheless, she freely admits 'it's a given' that having a movie star father was helpful to her when she was starting out in Hollywood. 'People notice you and say: "Let's take a look at what Henry Fonda's daughter can do,"' she observed.
Cognizant of the way she was being perceived, she 'worked twice as hard' at acting in order to demonstrate that she had her own capabilities.
'You do wonder if people hire you just because of who your mother or father is, or resent you because of it,' she told 9Honey earlier this year. 'I wanted to show that I wasn't just another "nepo baby."'
Jane joined Henry onscreen in the 1981 movie On Golden Pond, in which they played a father and daughter alongside Katharine Hepburn as the mother.
The shoot helped Jane and Henry mend their relationship, mirroring the dynamic between the characters they portrayed in the picture.
Jane often cites a moment in the filming that she found especially touching, one that took place as they shot the scene where she tells her father: 'I want to be your friend.'
'And I saved one thing for the last,' she said. 'He wasn't used to ever doing anything that hadn't been rehearsed. He didn't like surprises. And so at the very last, when I said: "I want to be your friend," I reached out and I touched his arm.'
Henry was thrown by the unannounced gesture, and Jane 'could see him seize up,' she told the American Film Institute. 'I could see tears begin in his eyes, and then he ducked his head and turned away, but I saw. I saw.'
He won an Oscar for On Golden Pond but was too ill to attend the ceremony, so Jane accepted the prize on his behalf. Five months later, he was dead at the age of 77.
'Before he died I was able to tell him that I loved him and that I forgave him for whatever didn't happen and I hoped that he would forgive me for not being a better daughter. I got to say that to him,' Jane told Chris Wallace on CNN.
'He didn't say anything, but he wept and I had never seen that before. I'd never seen my father break down and weep, and it was powerful.'
Anjelica Huston, 74
Anjelica Huston always wanted to act but was less keen to make her screen debut working for her father, the legendary filmmaker John Huston.
When she was 16, though, he forced the issue - she was angling for the female lead in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo And Juliet but John got in the way, telling the Italian director she was unavailable and then snapping her up himself for his 1969 picture A Walk With Love And Death, a lugubrious romance set in 14th century France.
Making the movie was 'not a happy journey,' according to Anjelica, who regarded the plot as 'incredibly corny' and chafed at her father's refusal to let her wear makeup, while he grew progressively exasperated at her teenage inability to focus on set.
When the film was released she was 'really badly reviewed' and so she drifted away from the movies, 'sensitive' to her first drubbing, she told the Guardian.
In the 1970s she worked mainly as a model, posing for fashion photographers as vaunted as David Bailey and Richard Avedon.
But her true fame in those years stemmed from being half of the era's reigning 'it' couple, as the magnetic Amazonian girlfriend of Jack Nicholson.
Now, she was hauling not only the 'nepotism' baggage but the potential perception that she would be handed work because of whom she was dating.
'And I was clueless enough at the time not to realize that of course everything comes from people you know, everything is a handout, really,' she reflected later.
'Especially in this kind of work, it's all about who you are, who you know, what you can do and how you can prove yourself. It took me a while to understand that.'
By the 1980s, she had rigorously applied herself at acting class and regained her self-assurance in her ability to perform onscreen.
In 1985 she united the men in her life for the crime comedy Prizzi's Honor, in which she played opposite Jack Nicholson and was directed by her father.
The last John Huston movie to be released while he was alive, Prizzi's Honor was a critical and commercial triumph that earned Anjelica an Oscar for her performance as a conniving gun moll besotted with Jack's mafia hitman.
Finally respected as an actress in her own right, Anjelica embarked on a wide-ranging career that included critical fare like Woody Allen's Crimes And Misdemeanors and Stephen Frears' The Grifters, as well as camp classics like The Witches and a brace of Addams Family movies.
She is still working busily at 74, having recently featured in the new John Wick film Ballerina as well as a six-part miniseries of Agatha Christie's Below Zero.
Although she revealed this year that she soldiered through a secret cancer battle four years ago, she dismissed the idea of retirement out of hand. 'I can't imagine such a thing,' she said in a recent interview with People.
Jamie Lee Curtis, 66
Jamie Lee Curtis is a 'nepo baby' twice over, as the daughter of not one but two film stars - Some Like It Hot heartthrob Tony Curtis and Hitchcock blonde Janet Leigh.
When Jamie Lee was three, her parents divorced and Tony promptly dropped out of his daughter's life, precipitating a long estrangement that they were eventually able to patch up years before his death in 2010 at the age of 85.
'Children, as we all know, are complicated and messy,' Jamie Lee said on The Talk after he died. 'He was not a father and he was not interested in being a father.'
By the time Jamie Lee made her screen debut at 19 on the medical show Quincy ME, both her parents' careers had faded into the haze of Hollywood history - but her mother's legacy was still able to help Jamie Lee get the part that made her a star.
Janet Leigh was best known as Norman Bates' shrieking victim in the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 picture Psycho.
Eighteen years later, her daughter found herself testing for her own 'scream queen' role in the shape of Laurie Strode, the teenage heroine of the original Halloween.
'I'm sure the fact that I was Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis's daughter, and that my mother had been in Psycho - if you're going to choose between this one and this one, choose the one whose mother was in Psycho, because it will get some press for you,' Jamie Lee acknowledged decades later.
She would never 'pretend' that her casting was unrelated to her famous parentage, she said, adding: 'Clearly, I had a leg up,' via the New Yorker.
Halloween emerged as a stupendous sleeper hit in 1978, and Jamie Lee was able to use its success as a launchpad to a long-lived career.
She proved her mettle in comedies like A Fish Called Wanda and Freaky Friday and romances like True Lies, before finally winning an Oscar for the 2022 sci-fi feature Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Meanwhile, the chatter around 'nepo babies' reached a fever pitch in December 2022 after New York magazine ran a viral cover story on the phenomenon.
Jamie Lee responded to the online discourse with an Instagram post in which she called herself the 'OG Nepo Baby' and defended her fellow showbiz legacies.
She insisted that 'there's not a day in my professional life that goes by without my being reminded that I am the daughter of movie stars. The current conversation about nepo babies is just designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt.'
Jamie Lee added: 'For the record I have navigated 44 years with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me, I don't pretend there aren't any, that try to tell me that I have no value on my own.'
She argued: 'It's curious how we immediately make assumptions and snide remarks that someone related to someone else who is famous in their field for their art, would somehow have no talent whatsoever. I have come to learn that is simply not true.
'I have suited up and shown up for all different kinds of work with thousands of thousands of people and every day I've tried to bring integrity and professionalism and love and community and art to my work. I am not alone. There are many of us. Dedicated to our craft. Proud of our lineage. Strong in our belief in our right to exist.'
Michael Douglas, 80
Michael Douglas is a scion of Old Hollywood royalty, as the son of Spartacus star Kirk Douglas and his actress wife Diana Dill.
Early in his own movie career, Michael was a successful producer, helping bring The China Syndrome and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest to the screen in the 1970s.
His family ties were a boon to him at that stage - he scored the rights for the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest from his father, who had bought them years earlier in order to play the lead role of rebellious mental patient McMurphy on Broadway.
Kirk wanted to reprise the role on film, but Michael had to jettison him from the project and McMurphy was ultimately immortalized onscreen by Jack Nicholson.
Although Michael's acting career had begun in 1969 with the film Hail Mary! and continued through the 1970s in theater and television, the peak of his celebrity came in the 1980s and 1990s when he starred in two of the iconic erotic thrillers of the era.
First came the 1987 picture Fatal Attraction, led by him and Glenn Close, and then in 1992 came Basic Instinct, which cast him opposite Sharon Stone.
The 1980s was also when Michael delivered his best-remembered performance: his Oscar-winning turn as the ruthless Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street.
His longtime fans also remember him in such movies as the adventure picture Romancing The Stone and the jet-black divorce comedy The War Of The Roses, both starring him alongside Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito.
'Greed is good': The 1980s was when Michael delivered his best-remembered performance - his Oscar-winning turn as the ruthless Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street
In his later years, his marriage to Catherine Zeta-Jones has repeatedly drawn attention for its yawning 25-year age gap.
The couple have two children - Carys, 22, who acted in short films, and Dylan, 20, who as a child had a voice role on an episode of Disney Channel's Phineas and Ferb.
Michael responded witheringly to the 'nepo baby' tag late last year, while speaking at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia.
'I don't know a father in whatever business, be it a plumber or a contractor or a carpenter, who doesn't try to help his son join him,' he said onstage, according to the Independent. 'I'm a nepo baby too, you know? So that's the way it goes.'
He announced his retirement this year at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, explaining: 'I had been working pretty hard for almost 60 years, and I did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on the set.'
Since Kirk died in 2020 at the grand old age of 103, Michael has been an affectionate steward of his legacy, for example by plugging his charity the Douglas Foundation.
In recent years, Kirk Douglas' reputation fell under scrutiny over allegations that he had raped Natalie Wood when she was a teenager.
The claim was leveled by Natalie's own sister Lana Wood in her book Little Sister: My Investigation Into The Mysterious Death Of Natalie Wood.
With publicity swirling around the accusation in late 2021, Michael put out a statement through a publicist saying simply: 'May they both rest in peace.'
June Lockhart, 100
June Lockhart celebrated her 100th birthday last month, after a glittering decades-long career that spans classic 1940s movies, 1960s TV hits and even - by the 2010s - playing a character in a video game.
She is so beloved as a standalone figure, especially by fans of throwback TV shows like Lassie and Lost In Space, that the fact of her 'nepo baby' status is often forgotten.
In fact June was born in 1925 to two actors, the Broadway star Gene Lockhart and the acclaimed Anglo-American thespian Kathleen Lockhart.
As a little girl, young June gave her first live performance in New York at the age of eight in a Metropolitan Opera production of Peter Ibbetson.
Although her parents encouraged her to join their profession, they 'were perfectly happy with whatever I wanted to do,' June maintained to Senior News & Living.
'But they knew music, dance, and art would be a good background and I made my debut dancing at the age of eight. I also had piano lessons which I hated and told my father to save his money, telling him: "Daddy, it's just not me!"'
When the family moved from New York to Los Angeles, June was immersed in the world of Hollywood and by the age of 13 had made her movie debut alongside her parents in a 1938 MGM adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
As she progressed through her adolescence, her education at a high school in Beverly Hills ran alongside a burgeoning film career that saw her feature in such 1940s pictures as Meet Me In St Louis, The Yearling and All This And Heaven Too.
It was by returning to Broadway, however, that she finally came out from under her parents' shadow and earned the respect of her peers for her own craft.
The turning point arrived with her performance in the 1947 play For Love or Money, which earned her a Tony Award when she was 22 years old.
Then in the 1950s and 1960s, she achieved her lasting fame playing two beloved TV mothers, first Ruth on Lassie and then Maureen on Lost In Space.
'I applied my own maternal instinct in both of these shows. I am that lady who talks it through if there is a problem and comforts if someone is upset,' she said.
Her personal favorite was Lost In Space because it was 'so campy,' she shared, recalling one episode when she had to act with a man dressed as a giant carrot and 'was invited to go home because I just lost it laughing,' via Closer.
She continued acting until 2021 when she made a guest appearance on the Netflix reboot of Lost In Space, and is now happily retired.
Married and divorced twice, June has welcomed two children including a 'nepo baby' of her own - Battlestar Gallactica actress Anne Lockhart.
Isabella Rossellini, 73
Make a wish: Isabella Rossellini and her twin sister Isotta are pictured on their first birthday in 1953 with their brother Robertino, half-brother Renzo and parents Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini
Isabella Rossellini is another star whose showbiz pedigree comes from both sides of her family: her mother was Casablanca star Ingrid Bergman while her father was the pioneering Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini.
Ingrid was at the height of her fame when her Hollywood career was torpedoed by her affair with Roberto, which started while they were making his 1950 film Stromboli - and while she was married to her first husband, dentist Peter Lindstrom.
Pouring fuel on the controversy, she gave birth to her lover's son while she was still legally Peter's wife, as he had refused her request for a divorce, forcing her to travel to Mexico so she could have their union legally dissolved and marry Roberto.
The scandal became so intense that Ingrid left Hollywood and returned to her native Europe, where she acted in films for her new Italian husband.
Making waves: Ingrid was at the height of her Hollywood stardom when her career was torpedoed by her affair with Roberto, which started while they were making his 1950 film Stromboli; pictured 1950
Protective: Isabella and her twin sister Isotta were born in Rome in 1953 during Ingrid's sojourn in Italy; Isabella is pictured with her mother in 1980
Cult fave: Isabella became an icon for the arthouse crowd with the 1986 David Lynch movie Blue Velvet (pictured), which landed her an Independent Spirit Award
Isabella and her twin sister Isotta were born in Rome in 1953, a few years before Ingrid made her Hollywood comeback with the 1956 feature Anastasia.
Like Anjelica Huston around the same time, Isabella initially established herself in the 1970s as a model rather than an actress, sliding into a career in which her successes could not be so easily chalked up merely to her parents' celebrity.
However, she was inexorably drawn towards cinema, even selecting Martin Scorsese for her first husband, and in the 1980s she achieved her own big screen stardom.
Isabella became an icon for the arthouse crowd with the 1986 David Lynch movie Blue Velvet, which landed her an Independent Spirit Award.
Hailed for her beauty and talent, and as the perfect blend of her parents' attributes, Isabella forged an off-kilter career with films in America and Europe like Death Becomes Her, Joy and the Soviet-Italian co-production Dark Eyes.
Her TV career included roles on shows as Alias and Friends, as well as her own cult classic series Green Porno about the mating habits of animals.
Higher calling: She is pictured in her Oscar-nominated role as the hardboiled Vatican fixer Sister Agnes in last year's Conclave with (from left) John Lithgow, Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci
Acknowledgment: She addressed her 'nepo baby' status while promoting the film last year, saying: 'Of course it opens the door, because people are curious to see you,' via the Guardian; pictured last year
This year she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as the hard-bitten Vatican fixer Sister Agnes in the drama Conclave.
She addressed her 'nepo baby' status while promoting the film last year, saying: 'Of course it opens the door, because people are curious to see you,' via the Guardian.
'But I don't know that it was an advantage. The judgment is much more severe, and you don't have time to grow,' Isabella mused.
Her relationship to her secondhand fame has evolved over the years, she explained late last year during a wide-ranging interview with Variety.
'I used to be introduced as: "Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini's daughter," and it bothered me, because I would think: "I am my own person,"' she said.
'But now, the younger generation doesn't know them, and it breaks my heart. Their reputations outlived them, but fame is very brief.'
Liza Minnelli, 79
That's a wrap: Liza Minnelli was born in 1946 to movie star Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli; she is pictured with her mother in 1965 in New York
Setting the record straight: Liza, 79, pictured last October, is working on a memoir she says was partly provoked by her annoyance at the inaccurate portrayals of her mother
Liza Minnelli was born in 1946 to movie star Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, who became a couple while working on the classic film Meet Me in St. Louis.
Vincente was the second of Judy's five husbands, in a rocky personal life buffeted by decades of addiction that led to her death of an accidental overdose at the age of 47.
Liza often remarks that she received her 'dreams' from her father and her 'drive' from her mother during her upbringing in showbiz.
She accompanied her father to the sets of his films and joined her mother on concert tours, changing schools constantly and living in hotels.
Looking back on that period, Liza has joked that she would have starved if she had not learned how to order room service on her own as a child.
As she grew older, she became a protector of sorts for Judy, helping shield her from the public scrutiny aimed at her personal demons.
Her mother also shepherded Liza's entree into the limelight, featuring her young daughter on her CBS variety show and her concert act at the London Palladium.
In her late teens, Liza struck out to New York alone - clear across the country from her parents' stamping grounds of Hollywood - and pursued a career on Broadway, never accepting money from her family again.
Arrivals: Liza is pictured at her Beverly Hills christening in 1946 with her parents, Judy and Vincente (right), as well as Reverend Herbert J Smith (left)
Clean living: As a young woman, Liza initially steered clear of alcohol and drugs, having witnessed her mother's fatal descent into addiction; Liza and Judy pictured in 1965
Rise: Thus began Liza's own decades of stardom, in which she won Oscar for the film Cabaret (pictured) and an Emmy for the concert special Liza with a Z, plus a clutch of Tonys
She got her big break in the 1965 musical Flora, the Red Menace, with songs by Fred Ebb and John Kander, a duo who became Liza's lifelong friends and collaborators.
Although the show flopped commercially, Liza won a Tony Award for best leading actress - becoming, at age 19, the youngest woman ever to do so.
Thus began Liza's own decades of stardom, in which she won Oscar for the film Cabaret and an Emmy for the concert special Liza with a Z, plus a clutch of Tonys.
Liza won her Academy Award with her father by her side, and when her name was called, he shrieked with joy so loudly that he gave her tinnitus.
Although she proved her talents in Hollywood and on Broadway, and in sold-out concerts all over the world, public perception always placed Liza in Judy's shadow.
Part of the phenomenon stemmed from Liza's singing voice, which was widely noted for its distinct similarity to Judy's, a comparison Liza reacted to by saying: 'I am my mother's daughter. Who should I sound like, Peggy Lee?'
Smooch: Liza often remarks that she received her 'dreams' from her father and her 'drive' from her mother during her upbringing in showbiz; Vincente, Liza and Judy pictured in 1947
Fitting: Although she proved her talents in Hollywood, on Broadway, and in concert, public perception always placed Liza in Judy's shadow; Judy and Liza are pictured in 1947
Daddy's girl: Liza won her Academy Award with her father by her side - and when her name was called, he shrieked with joy so loudly that he gave her tinnitus; Liza and Vincente are pictured in 1970
Another issue was that by the late 1970s, Liza's private life had become increasingly tempestuous, rocked by a burgeoning drug problem that left fans and friends worrying that she would follow in her mother's tragic footsteps.
Ultimately, Liza was able to wrench herself out of her spiral, undergoing rehab at the Betty Ford Clinic and entering Alcoholics Anonymous.
But she also echoed her mother's private life in her four divorces - the same amount as Judy, who died while married to her own fifth husband Mickey Deans.
In a farcical twist, Liza's second husband Jack Haley Jr happened to be the son of the man who had played the Tin Man alongside Judy in The Wizard of Oz, and Liza leaned into the baroque connection by wearing ruby slippers to the wedding.
Through her career, Liza has attempted to strike a balance between establishing her own public persona and preserving her parents' legacies.
She performed a one-woman Broadway show called Minnelli on Minnelli, dedicated to her father's movies, and is working on a memoir she says was partly provoked by her annoyance at the inaccurate portrayals of her mother.
To this day, Liza and her parents hold what could be regarded as the 'nepo baby' triple crown - they are the only family in which every member has won an Oscar.
Vanessa Redgrave, 88
Dynasty: Vanessa Redgrave (second from left) is pictured aged 25 in 1962 with her sisters Corin and Lynn Redgrave and their parents Michael Redgrave (right) and Rachel Kempson (left)
Towering figure: Vanessa, now 88, is pictured last year with her own 'nepo baby' Joely Richardson, an actress best known for her role on the hit drama Nip/Tuck
Vanessa Redgrave hails from as vaunted an acting family in Britain as the Barrymores were in America, with careers stretching from stage to screen.
Although her grandparents acted in the 19th century theater, it was Vanessa's parents Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson who have come to be regarded as the matriarch and patriarch of the now sprawling showbiz dynasty.
Her own stage career took off in the 1960s after she starred in As You Like It for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which both her parents had acted for in years past.
Vanessa's exalted heritage also came in handy in her early film career, inasmuch as her big screen debut, the 1958 hospital drama Behind The Mask, had her father in the lead role and introduced her to cinema audiences in a supporting part.
Her siblings Lynn Redgrave and Corin Redgrave became actors as well, but it was Vanessa whose prodigious talent made the biggest splash.
Not only did she enjoy a glittering stage career on both sides of the Atlantic, landing a Tony and an Olivier, but she also planted a firm foothold in the movies.
Her films ranged from historical dramas like A Man for All Seasons and Mary, Queen Of Scots, to European counterculture fare like Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-up, to her beguiling turn as Sean Connery's love interest in the 1974 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder On The Orient Express.
Vanessa's searing acting ability enabled her to weather the scandals brought on by her leftist political activism, such as when she was booed onstage at the Oscars for denouncing 'Zionist hoodlums.'
Making her way: Her stage career flourished in the 1960s after she starred in a play for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which both her parents had acted for; Vanessa and Michael pictured 1958
Credits: Her her big screen debut, the 1958 hospital drama Behind The Mask, had her father in the lead role (left) and introduced her to movie audiences in a supporting part (center)
Honored: She won her Oscar for the 1977 movie Julia, in which she played an anti-fascist murdered by the Nazis alongside Jane Fonda as author Lillian Hellman (right)
She won that Academy Award for the 1977 movie Julia, in which she played an anti-fascist murdered by the Nazis alongside Jane Fonda as author Lillian Hellman.
The film was controversial due to Vanessa's vigorous support of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization, which prompted her to be burned in effigy by the Jewish Defense League, which picketed the Oscars over her nomination.
Shrugging off the brickbats, Vanessa enjoyed a top-flight career into her old age, with parts in projects as varied as Tom Cruise's first Mission: Impossible movie and the Keira Knightley and James McAvoy starrer Atonement.
Her failed marriage to filmmaker Tony Richardson gave her two daughters who followed Vanessa's footsteps into the acting profession.
Joely Richardson is best known for Nip/Tuck, while Natasha Richardson featured in The Parent Trap as the mother of the twins played by Lindsay Lohan.
Trio: Vanessa is pictured in 2000 with her actress daughters Joely (right) and Natasha Richardson (left), who died tragically of a head injury suffered while skiing in 2009
Vanessa's long romance with Italian actor Franco Nero also produced a son, Carlo Gabriel Nero, who has gone onto become a filmmaker.
Her fanatical devotion to her political activities meant Vanessa had scant time for her children while they were growing up, and although she tried to impress upon them that she was hoping to create a better future for them, little Natasha fired back: 'But I need you now. I won't need you so much then.'
After her progeny grew up, Vanessa admitted to Charlie Rose that 'a difficult price to pay was not spending really any time with my children. That was difficult.'
In her later years, Vanessa withstood a shattering tragedy when Natasha fell on a ski slope without a helmet and died of a head injury at the age of just 45 in 2009.
Natasha once spoke candidly about the pressures of coming from a famous family, explaining that the 'names Richardson or Redgrave didn't help' at the start.
'But the last thing you want is to ride any coattails, because you don't want people to be accusing you of nepotism. You want to be able to learn and practice, and not to be thrown into a spotlight before you're ready for it.'
Natasha's own legacy continues with the sons she welcomed with her husband Liam Neeson - Daniel Neeson, 28, who has launched an eco-friendly clothing line and a sustainable liquor brand, and Micheal Richardson, 30, an actor, who assumed his mother's surname to memorialize her.