Liam Neeson On Wife Natasha Richardson's Death: '[Her Death] Was Never Real'

Even five years after Liam Neeson’s wife, Natasha Richardson, died in a skiing accident at the age of 45, he still can’t believe she’s gone. The Irish actor sat down for an interview with “60 Minutes” and explained to Anderson Cooper that he and his late wife had the connection of a lifetime and revealed the story of how they fell in love.

"[Her death] was never real. It still kind of isn't," he told Cooper, as quoted by CBS News. "There's periods now in our New York residence when I hear the door opening, especially the first couple of years ... anytime I hear that door opening, I still think I'm going to hear her."

The two were married in 1994 at their farmhouse in upstate New York. They had two sons: Micheal, now 19, and Daniel, 18. Richardson was the daughter of British actress Vanessa Redgrave and the late film director Tony Richardson.

"She was a radiant beauty. Yeah, cascading hair. I remember," he told Cooper of Richardson, who died in March 2009, after falling and hitting her head on a Quebec ski slope. "There was -- that was very, very attractive."

"I'd never had that kind of an explosive chemistry situation with an actor, or actress," he added. "She and I were like [Fred] Astaire and [Ginger] Rogers. We had just this wonderful kind of dance, free dance on stage every night, you know?"

Neeson recalled seeing Richardson in the hospital and realizing she wasn’t going to leave it alive. Neeson told Cooper of a pact the couple made: If either were ever to be in a vegetative state, the other would pull the plug. The actor said she was kept alive long enough so that family and friends could say their goodbyes.

The pain hasn’t subsided. “It hits you. It's like a wave. You just get this profound feeling of instability ... the Earth isn't stable anymore and then it passes and it becomes more infrequent, but I still get it sometimes," he told Cooper.

Neeson’s latest movie, “Non-Stop,” is set to premiere in theaters next week.

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