Never were two celebrity deaths more opposite.

Actress Natasha Richardson, 45, died on Wednesday from a seemingly insignificant tumble during a skiing lesson at a posh Quebec resort that turned out to be a catastrophic brain injury. As her family was laying her to rest near her adopted home in New York, British reality-TV star Jade Goody, 27, died after a months-long battle against cervical cancer. In Goody's case, the media deathwatch was in place and the tribute issues ready to roll. Richardson's passing was so unexpected that the paparazzi scrum was left scrambling and magazine editors had to work through the weekend.  

But then again, rarely have two celebrity lives been more opposite.

Natasha Richardson was the scion of an acting dynasty: the granddaughter of the great stage actor Michael Redgrave, daughter of Vanessa, niece of Lynn and Corin. Her father, Tony Richardson, was one of the best-known film directors of the 1960s. Beautiful, intelligent and well-connected, she could have had fame without the bother of really working for it. But she really worked for it, studying at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, honing her skills on the stage and eventually moving into film career. Along the way, she picked up a slew of awards (including a Tony) and built a collection of film roles to be proud of. She survived the chaos of a complicated family life played out in the public eye and  grew up to be an open and compassionate woman, a beloved wife, mother, sister, niece, friend. The mourning of those left behind was palpable.

Jade Goody wasn't the scion of anything --  wouldn't have even known what that word meant. She was just a council-flats kid from the wrong side of London. Her father was a crack addict who died of an overdose in the bathroom of a KFC. Her mother, Jackiey, was a petty thief, a drug user, abusive. Poorly educated and beset by a George Bush-like grasp of language, Jade was working as a dental office assistant when she catapulted to fame in 2002 as a cast member on the popular British reality show, Big Brother.

She was a one-woman gaffe machine. "Rio de Janeiro, ain't that a person?" she asked. Nor was she up on local geography: she didn't know that East Anglia was the region just north of London.  "They were trying to use me as an escape goat," she explained at one point. She assured people she wasn't "being tictactical in here" She referred to her pudgy midriff as her "kabab belly" -- not that it stopped her from showing it -- and had no compunctions about getting drunk and appearing to service a male cast-mate...all on camera.

Audiences delighted in the sheer horror of it all: "Here she is: fat-rolled, Michelin girl Jade in all her preposterous lack of glory," wrote the Daily Mirror. "Naked as the day Dr Frankenstein made her." She managed to ride her infamy for the next four years, escaping debt for a mini-mansion in a nice neighborhood, a turbo-charged Range Rover, and a personal net worth estimated at a £2-4 million.

Then it all came crashing down. During the 2007 season of Big Brother, Jade began fighting with Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. her race-tinged tirades against "Shilpa Poppadom" led to her ejection from the house and the outrage of two nations. "Jade, We Hate You – The Nation Turns On Thick Racist Bully!" went one representative headline. She was burned in effigy in India. Her management company dropped her. Offers stopped coming. She had embarked on a lengthy rehabilitation tour, capped by trip to India to join the cast of their version of Big Brother last summer, when she learned (on camera) she was suffering from advanced cervical cancer.

At first people thought it might be a publicity stunt, but it was all too real. Goody began a race against time to earn money for her young sons. She sold her terminal illness piecemeal, with each "exclusive" another check for the trust fund. It was the last thing the public got to criticize her for.

It's easy to take a quick look at the two women and assign worth. Natasha Richardson was a serious artist, a person of talent, who could have delighted audiences for decades to come. Jade Goody was one of the new breed of celebrity, famous only for being famous...a talent-free blip on the cultural radar.

And that would be wrong. If, as Shakespeare said, all the world's a stage and all the people merely players, Jade Goody was one hell of an actress. Real actors and actresses work for decades to allow themselves to be naked, vulnerable, honest with their audiences; she was a natural. The camera didn't make her feel vulnerable: it made her feel safe.

The rise-fall-redemption arc of her story has a long literary history, and in Jade's case, it had the added pathos of being real. No less a personage than the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, noted this weekend that "If in her earlier career it was all about her then I think at the end it was about something else." She didn't become a cancer crusader in her final months, but she was brutally honest about her situation and her belief that poor treatment by the National Health Service had been to blame. Because of her, people across the UK are agitating for earlier and more frequent cancer screenings from the NHS.

"I've lived my whole adult life talking about my life. The only difference is that I'm talking about my death now. It's OK," Goody said in a recent interview. "I've lived in front of the cameras. And maybe I'll die in front of them. And I know some people don't like what I'm doing but at this point I really don't care what other people think. Now, it's about what I want."

What she wanted was for her little boys to be baptized with her in a hospital chapel before she slipped away; what she wanted was to make sure there was enough money to make sure they got the education and opportunities she never had. And she wanted a memorial service that was a true "Jade Goody Production," her spokesman told the media in her final hours.

Like Richardson, she will be fondly remembered and truly missed. “You may not have known where East Anglia was," said a message left outside her home in the hours following her death, "but you knew the way to our hearts.”