Liam Neeson has publicly spoken for the first time about the death of his wife Natasha Richardson following a 2009 skiing accident.
The Oscar-nominated star, who was filming in Montreal when the accident happened, has opened up about racing to get to his wife's hospital bed.
In an interview in the March issue of Esquire: "I walked into the emergency - it's like 70, 80 people, broken arms, black eyes, all that - and for the first time in years, nobody recognizes me.
"Not the nurses. The patients. No one. And I've come all this way, and they won't let me see her."
The 58-year-old added: "So I went outside. It's freezing cold, and I thought, What am I gonna do? How am I going to get past the security?"
Eventually he was recognized by a nurse who was on a smoke break: "I'll tell you, I was so grateful - for the first time in I don't know how long - to be recognized.
"And this one, she says, 'Go in that back door there.' She points me to it. 'Make a left. She's in a room there.' So I get there, just in time. And all these young doctors, who look all of eighteen years of age, they tell me the worst. The worst."
The Belfast star says he survived by "running away to work" less than a month after the March 2009 accident but he admits he was unable to completely escape the pain.
The 'Battleship' star added: "It's easy enough to plan jobs, to plan a lot of work.
"That's effective. But that's the weird thing about grief. You can't prepare for it. You think you're gonna cry and get it over with. You make those plans, but they never work."
"It hits you in the middle of the night - well, it hits me in the middle of the night.
"I'm out walking. I'm feeling quite content. And it's like suddenly, boom. It's like you've just done that in your chest."
Richardson suffered a severe head injury on 16 March 2009, while taking a skiing lesson at the Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec, Canada.
The 45-year-old actress initially seemed fine and refused medical attention, but hours later, she complained of a headache and was taken to a local hospital.
