USA — US actor
Christopher Reeve, best known for his role as Superman,
has died, his publicist said.
He was 52.
His near-fatal riding accident nine
years ago turned him into a worldwide advocate for spinal
cord research.
Reeves had been paralysed since the
accident.
He fell into a coma on Saturday
after going into cardiac arrest while at his New York
home and died yesterday, publicist Wesley Combs said from
Washington, DC.
Reeve was being treated at Northern
Westchester Hospital for a pressure wound that he
developed, a common complication for people with
paralysis.
In the past week, the wound had
become severely infected, resulting in a serious systemic
infection.
"On behalf of my entire family, I
want to thank Northern Westchester Hospital for the
excellent care they provided to my husband," Dana Reeve,
his widow, said in a statement.
"I also want to thank his personal
staff of nurses and aides, as well as the millions of
fans from around the world who have supported and loved
my husband over the years."
Reeve broke his neck in May 1995
when he was thrown from his horse during an equestrian
competition in Culpeper, Virginia.
Enduring months of therapy to allow
him to breathe for longer and longer periods without a
respirator, Reeve emerged to lobby the US Congress for
better insurance protection against catastrophic injury
and to move an Academy Award audience to tears with a
call for more films about social issues.
He returned to directing, and even
returned to acting in a 1998 production of Rear
Window, a modern update of the Hitchcock thriller
about a man in a wheelchair who becomes convinced a
neighbour has been murdered.
Reeve won a Screen Actors Guild
award for best actor in a television movie or
mini-series.
"I was worried that only acting
with my voice and my face, I might not be able to
communicate effectively enough to tell the story," Reeve
said.
"But I was surprised to find that
if I really concentrated, and just let the thoughts
happen, that they would read on my face. With so many
close-ups, I knew that my every thought would
count."
In his public appearances, he was
as handsome as ever, his blue eyes bright and his voice
clear.
"Hollywood needs to do more," he
said in the March 1996 Oscar awards appearance. "Let's
continue to take risks. Let's tackle the issues. In many
ways our film community can do it better than anyone
else. There is no challenge, artistic or otherwise, that
we can't meet."
In 2000, Reeve was able to move his
index finger, and a specialised workout regimen has made
his legs and arms stronger. He also regained sensation in
other parts of his body.
Reeve's support of stem cell
research helped it emerge as a key campaign issue between
President George W Bush and Senator John Kerry. His name
was even mentioned by Senator Kerry earlier this month
during the second presidential debate.
As for the strain of travelling to
Hollywood, Reeve said: "I refuse to allow a disability to
determine how I live my life. I don't mean to be
reckless, but setting a goal that seems a bit daunting
actually is very helpful toward recovery."
His athletic, 1.93m frame and love
of adventure made him a natural, if largely unknown,
choice for the title role in the first Superman
movie in 1978. He insisted on performing his own
stunts.
Although he reprised the role three
times, Reeve often worried about being typecast as an
action hero.
"Look, I've flown, I've become
evil, loved, stopped and turned the world backward, I've
faced my peers, I've befriended children and small
animals and I've rescued cats from trees," Reeve told the
Los Angeles Times in 1983, just before the release of the
third Superman movie.
"What else is there left for
Superman to do that hasn't been done?"
Though he owed his fame to it,
Reeve made a concerted effort to, as he often put it,
"escape the cape".
He played an embittered, crippled
Vietnam veteran in the 1980 Broadway play Fifth of
July, a lovestruck time-traveller in the 1980 movie
Somewhere in Time, and an aspiring playwright in
the 1982 suspense thriller Deathtrap.
"After the first Superman, I had
the compulsion to do parts that were really weird," Reeve
said in 1987.
"That freaked people out. I've
passed that."
More recent films included John
Carpenter's Village of the Damned, and the HBO
movies Above Suspicion and In the Gloaming,
which he directed. Among his other film credits are
The Remains of the Day, The Aviator, and
Morning Glory.
Yet Reeve always will be known to
movie fans as the strapping, boyishly handsome stage
veteran whose charm and humour brought a new dimension to
the characters of Superman and his alter-ego,
Clark Kent. The film co-starred Margot Kidder as Lois
Lane.
Reeve said in public appearances
promoting the Superman films, he tried to get children to
better themselves.
"They should be looking for
Superman's qualities – courage, determination,
modesty, humour – in themselves rather than
passively sitting back, gaping slack-jawed at this
terrific guy in boots," Reeve said.
Reeve was born on September 25,
1952, in New York City, son of a novelist and a newspaper
reporter. He was about 10 when he made his first stage
appearance – in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeoman
of the Guard at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New
Jersey.
He starred in virtually all of the
theatrical productions at the exclusive Princeton Day
School. By age 16, he had joined the actors'
union.
After graduating from Cornell
University in 1974, he landed a part as cold-hearted
bigamist Ben Harper on the television soap opera Love
of Life.
He also performed frequently on
stage, winning his first Broadway role as the grandson of
a character played by Katharine Hepburn in A Matter of
Gravity.
Reeve's first movie role was a
minor one in the submarine disaster movie Gray Lady
Down, released in 1978.
Superman soon followed. Reeve was
selected for the title role from about 200
aspirants.
Active in many sports, Reeve owned
several horses and competed in equestrian events
regularly. Witnesses to the May 1995 accident said
Reeve's horse had cleared two of 15 fences during the
jumping event and stopped abruptly at the third, flinging
the actor headfirst to the ground.
Doctors said he fractured the top
two vertebrae in his neck and damaged his spinal cord.
When he finally was released from a rehabilitation
institute in December 1995, he thanked staffed members
"who have set the stage for my continued
journey".
He underwent further rehabilitation
at his home in upstate New York.
While filming Superman in London,
Reeve met modelling agency co-founder Gae Exton, and the
two began a relationship that lasted several
years.
The couple had two sons, but never
married.
Reeve later married Dana Morosini;
they had one son, Will, 11. His wife became his frequent
spokeswoman after the accident.
Reeve is also survived by his
mother, Barbara Johnson; his father, Franklin Reeve; his
brother, Benjamin Reeve; and his two children from his
relationship with Exton, Matthew, 25, and Alexandra,
21.
No plans for a funeral were
immediately announced.
A few months after the accident, he
told interviewer Barbara Walters he considered suicide in
the first dark days after he was injured. But he quickly
overcame such thoughts when he saw his
children.
"I could see how much they needed
me and wanted me ... and how lucky we all are and that my
brain is on straight."
