NAMES IN THE NEWS : Redgrave Daughter Speaks Out

NEW YORK — As the child of the outspoken Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson found the easiest thing was to keep her opinions to herself, steering clear of the controversy that surrounded her mother.

But with an increasing profile of her own that may have to change, the 26-year-old actress says in the December issue of Mademoiselle.

“It was hard growing up and seeing all this press against your mother,” Richardson said. “I’d be sitting next to a girl in chemistry, and she’d say, ‘Your mother’s a commie.’ ”

But her roles in “Fat Man and Little Boy,” which deals with the making of the atomic bomb, and in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” about a make-believe society that executes women who have abortions, have forced Richardson to speak out.

“I’m not a feminist in any way at all, at all. But the abortion issue is different. When men say that women shouldn’t be allowed to choose. . . . It just makes my blood boil,” said the actress, whose father is director Tony Richardson.