Christopher Reeve
Christopher D'Olier Reeve[1] (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, film director, author, and activist, best known for playing the title character in the film Superman (1978) and its three sequels. Born in New York City and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Reeve discovered a passion for acting and theater at the age of nine. He studied at Cornell University and the Juilliard School, making his Broadway debut in 1976. After his acclaimed performances in Superman and Superman II, Reeve declined many roles in action movies, choosing instead to work in small films and plays with more complex characters. He later appeared in critically successful films such as The Bostonians (1984), Street Smart (1987), and The Remains of the Day (1993), and in the plays Fifth of July on Broadway and The Aspern Papers in London's West End.
For the South African knife maker, see Chris Reeve.
Christopher Reeve
September 25, 1952
October 10, 2004 (aged 52)
Ferncliff Cemetery, Greenburgh, New York
- Actor
- director
- author
- activist
1970–2004
Gae Exton (1978–1987)
3, including Matthew
- F. D. Reeve (father)
- Franklin D'Olier (great-grandfather)
- Mahlon Pitney (great-grandfather)
- Beatrice Pitney Lamb (grandmother)
- Mary Schenck Woolman (great-great-grandaunt)
- Ferdinand Schureman Schenck (great-great-great-great-grandfather)
On May 27, 1995, Reeve was paralyzed from the neck down after being thrown from a horse during an equestrian competition in Culpeper, Virginia. He used a wheelchair and ventilator for the rest of his life. Reeve returned to creative work, directing In the Gloaming (1997) and acting in the television remake of Rear Window (1998). He also made two appearances in the Superman-themed television series Smallville, and wrote two autobiographical books, Still Me and Nothing Is Impossible. Over the course of his career, Reeve received a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, an Emmy Award, and a Grammy Award.
Beginning in the 1980s, Reeve was an activist for environmental and human-rights causes and for artistic freedom of expression. After his accident, he lobbied for spinal injury research, including human embryonic stem cell research, and for better insurance coverage for people with disabilities. His advocacy work included leading the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and co-founding the Reeve-Irvine Research Center.[2] Reeve died in 2004 from heart failure at a hospital near his home in Westchester County, New York.
Career[edit]
Early career[edit]
In 1974, Reeve played the role of Ben Harper in Love of Life. In late 1975, Reeve auditioned for the Broadway play A Matter of Gravity. Katharine Hepburn watched his audition and cast him as her character's grandson in the play. With Hepburn's influence over the CBS network, Reeve worked out the schedules of the soap opera Love of Life and the play so he would be able to do both. Because of his busy schedule, he ate candy bars and drank coffee in place of meals and experienced exhaustion and malnutrition. On the first night of the play's run, Reeve entered the stage, said his first line, and then promptly fainted. Hepburn turned to the audience and said, "This boy's a goddamn fool. He doesn't eat enough red meat." The understudy finished the play for Reeve, and a doctor treated him. The doctor advised Reeve to eat a healthier diet. He stayed with the play throughout its year-long run and was given very favorable reviews.[27]
Reeve and Hepburn became very close. She said, "You're going to be a big star, Christopher, and support me in my old age." He replied, "I can't wait that long." Some gossip columns rumored a romance between the two. Reeve said, "She was 67 and I was 22, but I thought that was quite an honor ... I believe I was fairly close to what a child or grandchild might have been to her." Reeve said his father, who was a professor of literature and came to many of the performances, was the man who most captivated Hepburn. When the play moved to Los Angeles in 1976, Reeve—to Hepburn's disappointment—dropped out. They stayed in touch for years after the play's run. Reeve later regretted not staying closer and just sending messages back and forth.[27]
Reeve's first role in a Hollywood film was a very small part as a junior officer in the 1978 naval submarine disaster movie Gray Lady Down, starring Charlton Heston. He then acted in the play My Life at the Circle Repertory Company with friend William Hurt.[28]
Personal life[edit]
Relationships[edit]
While filming the first two Superman movies in England, Reeve began a 10-year relationship with modeling executive Gae Exton.[72] Jane Seymour revealed at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2022 that Reeve and Exton had broken up prior to filming of Somewhere in Time, and during production, Reeve and Seymour fell in love. However, Reeve ended the relationship and returned to Exton upon learning that Exton was pregnant with their son Matthew Exton Reeve, who was born on December 20, 1979, followed by a daughter in December 1983. Both were born in London.[51] In February 1987, Reeve and Gae Exton separated amicably with joint custody of their children, and Reeve returned to New York. Matthew and Alexandra remained in London with their mother and often spent their holidays with Reeve.
In June 1987, Reeve met his future wife Dana Morosini, a singer and actress. By 1991, they were living together but Reeve, remembering his parents' painful divorce and other failed marriages in his family, could not bring himself to commit. After they almost broke up, Reeve began about a year of therapy, primarily to talk through his fears about marriage. Then one night during dinner, he said "I just put down my fork and asked her to marry me." They were married in April 1992,[73] and their son was born in 1992. The couple remained married until Reeve's death.[74]
Equestrianism and injury[edit]
Reeve began his involvement in horse riding in 1985 after learning to ride for the film Anna Karenina. He was initially allergic to horses, so he took antihistamines. He trained on Martha's Vineyard, and by 1989, he began eventing. His allergies soon disappeared.[75] He had leg injuries as a teen while skiing, and he later broke three ribs in a riding accident he described, along with the leg injuries, on The Tonight Show in March 1987.
Reeve purchased a 12-year-old American thoroughbred horse named Eastern Express, nicknamed "Buck" while filming Village of the Damned. He trained with Buck in 1994 and planned to do Training Level events in 1995 and move up to Preliminary in 1996. Though Reeve had originally signed up to compete at an event in Vermont, his coach invited him to go to the Commonwealth Dressage and Combined Training Association finals at the Commonwealth Park equestrian center in Culpeper, Virginia. Reeve finished in fourth place out of 27 in the dressage, before walking his cross-country course. He was concerned about jumps 16 and 17 but paid little attention to the third jump, which was a routine three-foot-three fence shaped like the letter 'W'.[76]
On May 27, 1995, Reeve's horse made a refusal. Witnesses said the horse began the third fence jump and suddenly stopped. Reeve fell forward off the horse, holding on to the reins. His hands became tangled in them, and the bridle and bit were pulled off the horse. He landed head first on the far side of the fence, shattering his first and second vertebrae. The resulting cervical spinal injury paralyzed him from the neck down[77] and halted his breathing. Paramedics arrived three minutes later and immediately took measures to get air into his lungs. He was taken first to the local hospital, before being flown by helicopter to the University of Virginia Medical Center.[78] He had no recollection of the accident.
Hospitalization[edit]
After five days in which Reeve was heavily medicated and delirious, he regained full consciousness. His doctor explained to him his first and second cervical vertebrae had been destroyed and his spinal cord damaged.[79] He was paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe without a ventilator.
Reeve's first thoughts when informed about the seriousness of his injury was he had ruined his life, would be a burden on his family, and it might be best to "slip away". He mouthed to his wife Dana, "Maybe we should let me go." She tearfully replied, "I will support whatever you want to do, because this is your life and your decision. But I want you to know that I'll be with you for the long haul, no matter what. You're still you. And I love you." In what she would later describe as a "sales ploy", she also told him that if he still wanted to die in two years they could reconsider the question.[80]
After this conversation, and visits from his children in which he saw how much they needed him, Reeve consented to lifesaving surgery and treatment for pneumonia.[81] He never considered euthanasia as an option again.[82][83]
Reeve went through inner anguish in the ICU, particularly when he was alone during the night. His approaching operation to reattach his skull to his spine in June 1995 "was frightening to contemplate. ... I already knew that I had only a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the surgery. ... Then, at an especially bleak moment, the door flew open and in hurried a squat fellow with a blue scrub hat and a yellow surgical gown and glasses, speaking in a Russian accent." The man announced that he was a proctologist and was going to perform a rectal exam on Reeve. It was Robin Williams, reprising his character from the film Nine Months. Reeve wrote: "For the first time since the accident, I laughed. My old friend had helped me know that somehow I was going to be okay."[84] In addition to visits from friends and family, Reeve received over 400,000 letters from all over the world, which gave him great comfort during his recovery.[85]
John A. Jane performed surgery to repair Reeve's neck vertebrae. He put wires underneath both laminae and used bone from Reeve's hip to fit between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. He inserted a titanium pin and fused the wires with the vertebrae, then drilled holes in Reeve's skull and fitted the wires through to secure the skull to the spinal column.[85]
Rehabilitation[edit]
After a month in the hospital, Reeve spent five months at the Kessler Rehabilitation Center in West Orange, New Jersey to continue with his recovery and learn skills such as operating his sip-and-puff electric wheelchair by blowing air through a straw. In his autobiography Still Me, he described initially not wanting to face the reality of his disability. Getting used to sitting strapped into a wheelchair, or taking a shower, were initially terrifying. Reeve developed a deep fondness for many of the staff at Kessler, and through conversations with the other patients gradually started to see himself as being part of the disabled community.[86]
For the first few months after the accident, Reeve relied on a ventilator, which was connected to his neck through a tracheostomy tube, for every breath. With therapy and practice, he developed the ability to breathe on his own for up to 90 minutes at a time.[87]
Reeve exercised for up to four or five hours a day, using specialized exercise machines to stimulate his muscles and prevent muscle atrophy and osteoporosis.[88] He believed that intense physical therapy could regenerate the nervous system, and also wanted his body to be strong enough to support itself if a cure for paralysis were found. Starting in 2000, he started to regain the ability to make small movements in his fingers and other parts of his body, and by 2002 reported that he could sense hot and cold temperatures on 65 per cent of his body. Reeve's doctors were surprised by his improvements, which they attributed to his intensive exercise regimen.[89][90]
Life with paralysis[edit]
In December 1995, Reeve moved back to his home in Pound Ridge, New York. By two years after the accident, Reeve said he was "glad to be alive, not out of obligation to others, but because life was worth living".[81] Reeve continued to require round-the-clock care for the rest of his life, with a team of 10 nurses and aides working in his home.[91]
In the aftermath of the accident, Reeve went through intense grief. He gradually resolved to make the best of his new life, with a busy schedule of activism, film work, writing and promoting his books, public speaking, and parenting. In 1998, he said in an interview:
Legacy[edit]
Reeve's widow, Dana Reeve, headed the Christopher Reeve Foundation after his death. Although a non-smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer on August 9, 2005. She died at age 44 on March 6, 2006,[135] and the foundation was subsequently renamed the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.[136]
All Reeve's children serve on the board of directors of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.[137]
Google Search showed a Doodle in some countries on September 25, 2021, to celebrate Christopher Reeve's 69th birthday.[138][139]
The 2024 documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, is about his life and aftermath of his accident.[140]
