At 5:02 PM PDT, E! Online reported that actress Natasha Richardson, age 45, has passed away after being taken off of life support. She suffered a head injury on Monday in Montreal during a ski lesson, was flown to New York’s Lenox Hospital on Tuesday, and was pronounced brain dead. She is survived by her husband, actor Liam Neeson.

I first saw Natasha Richardson onscreen in the film adaptation of  Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. She also played the mother of one of the twins (played by Lindsey Lohan) in the 1998 Disney movie The Parent Trap. In 2005, Richardson was in a film called The White Countess that also starred her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, and her Aunt, Lynn Redgrave.  More recently, she appeared in Wild Child which also starred Julia Roberts’ niece Emma Roberts.

I feel…shocked. She was only 45, just three years older than me. I still feel like I’m about 25 inside, I bet she did too. You figure you’re going to live another 40 years at least, so you do things like go skiing, never thinking that it could end your life. But then again, if you live in fear of dying, you’ll never really live, if that makes sense.

My sincere condolences go out to her entire family.