It is a tragic irony that the actor Christopher Reeve, who has died of heart failure aged 52, was renowned for two such contrasting roles: Superman, the supreme physical specimen, and a man paralysed from the neck down. Unfortunately, the latter was all too real.
In 1995, with his film career flourishing, Reeve, a keen rider, broke his neck when he was thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition in Virginia. After years of therapy, and despite pessimistic prognostications, he remained determined to walk again, and became a symbol of hope for quadriplegics like himself. “I refuse to allow a disability to determine how I live my life,” he said. “I don’t mean to be reckless, but setting a goal that seems a bit daunting actually is very helpful toward recovery.”
In 2000, Reeve was able to move his index finger and breathe for longer and longer periods without a respirator. He also regained sensation in other parts of his body. He dedicated almost all his energy to lobbying the US Congress for better insurance protection against catastrophic injury, and giving support to stem cell research.
It would be a pity, however, if his heroic and heartrending situation obscured Reeve’s many acting achievements. After all, he appeared in a total of 17 feature films, a dozen television movies and about 150 plays.
Reeve was born into an intellectual family in New York; his father FD Reeve is a noted novelist, poet and scholar of Russian literature; his mother, the journalist Barbara Johnson. He enjoyed a stimulating childhood environment that included Sunday dinners with the poets Robert Frost and Robert Penn Warren, and the politician and academic Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
The atmosphere was such that Reeve’s father was disappointed to learn that the role of Superman that his son had been offered was not one in the George Bernard Shaw play, Man And Superman.
Credit : The Guardian
Picture Credit : Google
