Christopher Reeve
HOLLYWOOD, California----I’ve just read Christopher Reeve’s mesmerising memoir, Still Me. It’s a heartbreaking yet inspiring story of the actor who found worldwide fame as Superman, only to be struck down in his prime aged 52 when he was thrown from his horse in 1995 and broke his neck.
Despite the devastating accident that left him paralysed for life in a wheelchair, he found the resilience to become an activist and created a charitable foundation to raise awareness and money for research into spinal cord injuries and helping thousands around the world. From his home in New York where he lived with wife Dana and three children, he travelled far to give speeches at political events and testified before Congress. Barely two years after the accident, he even returned to film, making his directorial debut with In the Gloaming, which earned him an Emmy nomination.
My first encounter with this superhero was when I interviewed him for a BBC television interview on the set of the classic movie, Somewhere in Time, with Jane Seymour and Christopher Plummer. The movie was shot on Mackinac Island, near Detroit, and the only way to reach it was via a tiny prop plane from the mainland. The weather was choppy forcing the plane to perform stomach-churning acrobatics for the whole journey. By the time I arrived I was a quivering wreck.
Chris Reeve happened to be an experienced pilot. He loved planes and had a small one of his own. He was disappointed to learn I’d had a bad experience reaching the island. I’d barely sat down when he began instructing me on the whole process of flying a plane. He even gave me a flight manual to study. When I flew back later, I sat behind the pilot, watching the instrument panel and remembering some of my mentor’s tutorial.
Cars were banned on Mackinac island. The only mode of transport was by bicycle. Something I’d never mastered. It fell to Chris to bike me around the island, with me holding on to his waist for dear life on a seat built only for one. He thought it was very funny. I can still hear his laughter. He loved to laugh. And always found something to laugh at. He was constantly teasing crew and actors and loved to clown around with Jane Seymour.
Somewhere in Time was only his second credited film after Superman. He was completely natural and down to earth, with a boyish eagerness, untouched by the global stardom that threatened to overwhelm him.
I remember one evening in his hotel room. We were discussing his life and he was reflecting on his childhood. He was a product of a broken family. But instead of feeling torn between father and mother, each of whom had remarried, he felt blessed to belong to two families who both loved him.
Chris was a firm believer in the power of the mind. He told me he once had risen out of his own body. After that he made it happen several times. He called it astro-projection and still carried the image of looking down below on himself lying on a bed. He was convinced that the human mind was only partially developed. And that there was another untapped sense in all of us that would one day be cultivated. That sense would be extra-sensory perception.
I interviewed him many times throughout the years, even ran into him once in the BBC’s lobby at TV Centre in London. The odds of both of us being in London and in that place at the same time (we both lived in Los Angeles) was more fodder for Chris’s belief that other powers were at work.
I never saw him again after his tragic riding accident. But the character he had until then displayed on the screen soon took over in reality. His determination, his dedication, his devotion to family and his courage, gave him the extraordinary strength to battle forward and achieve much to bring greater attention to spinal cord injuries.
Christopher Reeve was an inspiration. And he really was Superman.
Till next time, Shavua tov.