Vanessa Redgrave has described how she is still suffering from terrible grief over the skiing accident death of her daughter Natasha, who was married to Irish actor Liam Neeson.

“I used to be a big diary writer, but I haven't written for quite a while, and Joely, my second daughter, has been urging me to write again, to write to Natasha in my diary. And I said to her, ‘I know you're right, but I can't bring myself to do it, I literally cannot do it.’

“Although I knew she was right, I knew. But to write to my daughter and not be able to hear back, to leave a message for her not to ring me back, it's still a very, very hard thing,” Redgrave told Harper's Bazaar.

“It changed my world, because it isn't usual that the mother survives and the daughter dies, except in horrible situations like war or Gaza.

“I still find it very difficult, of course. I found it difficult when my mother died [in 2003], but I knew she had to. I was grief-stricken and missed her desperately, because she lived with me for the last few years of her life. But you accept that — even if you rebel spiritually because you can't bear your mother to have gone.

“Nevertheless, you know this has to happen, with old age. But when your daughter dies, it's so unacceptable, particularly when it's not expected in any shape or form. Actually it's pretty terrible if it is expected.”