Natasha Richardson buried near upstate NY home

LITHGOW, N.Y. — A somber group of friends and family gathered in a small Hudson Valley town Sunday to say a final farewell to Tony Award-winning actress Natasha Richardson.

Liam Neeson, in a dark suit and sunglasses, was at the head of the casket as he and five other pallbearers carried his wife's coffin into St. Peter's Episcopal Church, near the home where the two married in 1994.

He and Richardson's mother, actress Vanessa Redgrave, waved to the dozens of reporters crowded behind a police barricade on the dirt road leading to the tiny white clapboard church. The grieving family — including the couple's two sons, Micheal, 13, and Daniel, 12 — then paused to allow the media to photograph them in front of church before the service.

Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Laura Linney, Uma Thurman and Timothy Dalton were among the friends who filed into the church on the chilly spring afternoon.

After a graveside service under a large green tent, the 45-year-old actress was buried in a nearby cemetery, amid hilly horse farms about 80 miles north of New York City.

She was laid to rest near the grave of her maternal grandmother, the actress Rachel Kempson, who died while visiting her granddaughter and Neeson at their home in nearby Millbrook in 2003. Neeson and the Redgrave family, including Richardson's sister, actress Joely Richardson, visited Kempson's grave after the burial.