Vanessa Redgrave - Redgrave Still Grieving For Richardson

VANESSA REDGRAVE is still struggling to come to terms with her daughter NATASHA RICHARDSON's death, almost a year after her untimely passing.

The veteran star pulled out of all her acting commitments, including a role in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, after Richardson died from a brain injury following a skiing accident last March (09).

Redgrave's other daughter, Joely Richardson, urged her mother to put pen to paper to express her feelings about Natasha's passing - but the actress is finding it difficult.

She tells Harper's Bazaar magazine, "I used to be a big diary writer, but I haven't written for quite a while. Joely, my second daughter, has been urging me to write again, to write to Natasha in my diary.

"Although I knew she was right... 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."

And Redgrave admits the reason she is still struggling with her grief is because she finds it "unacceptable" that a mother should ever have to bury her daughter.

She adds, "(It) changed my world, because it isn't usual that the mother survived and the daughter dies, except in horrible situations like Gaza. I still find it very difficult, of course.

"I found it difficult when my mother died, 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."