Seven words from his wife convinced Superman actor Christopher Reeve to live (Picture: Shutterstock)
‘I’ve ruined my life and everybody else’s.’
That’s what Christopher Reeve was thinking in intensive care after a freak horse-riding accident changed his life in an instant on May 27, 1995. In his memoirs years later, he revealed what was running through his mind.
The actor, who became a global star through his role as Superman, had been taking part in an equestrian competition in the small town of Culpeper, Virginia, alongside hundreds of other riders when tragedy struck.
Approaching a triple-pole jump, his horse Buck suddenly came to a halt in what’s known as a ‘dirty stop.’ Chris – as he was known to friends and family – was thrown to the ground and landed on his head.
The star’s life is revisited in new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve story (Picture: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc)
The 42-year-old broke two vertebrae in his neck and suffered a large haemorrhage on his spinal cord, which meant his brain could no longer send information to the muscles of his body.
It emerged that if Chris had fallen one centimeter further to the left, he would have died on the spot. As a result of his injuries, doctors told him he would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
‘Broken dreams’ proclaimed the front page headline of the The New York Daily News after his accident.
However, the actor carried on living, working an actor and a campaigner, for nearly a decade – and now 20 years later his incredible story has been brought to the big screen in documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, directed by Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui.
Superman decides to fight
Chris Reeve as Superman in 1978 and (right) as the hero’s alter-ego Clark Kent alongside Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane
Speaking to Metro at the Rosewood Hotel in London, Ian says, ‘Chris had become invincible in people’s minds because he was Superman.
‘He could do anything; he could fly, he could shoot lasers from his eyes. He was an active, all-American kind of man. But ten years later, Chris was in a wheelchair and hardly able to move. Being trapped in his own body was his kryptonite.’
The documentary revisits the aftermath of the star’s horse-riding accident and Chris’s immediate thoughts as he lay, unable to move, in ICU. Letters of support had flooded in from fans as well as several famous faces, including Katherine Hepburn, Robert De Niro and Bill Clinton.
Yet the actor was still full of uncertainty about what the future held.
‘I won’t be able to ski, sail, throw a ball to will, make love to Dana,’ Chris says in some audio played in the film from his memoirs. ‘Maybe they should let me go.’
Source:: Metro
