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Disability in the News

Reeve Is 'Superman' For Real
Actor's memoir filled with humor and courage

STILL ME
By Christopher Reeve, Random House

May 11, 1998 -- After his first starring role, in "Superman," Christopher Reeve remembers taking extreme care not to have an accident. "I always used to joke about needing to be very careful," he writes, "because I didn't want to read a headline in the New York Post like 'Superman Hit by Bus.' " That he's able to joke about his attitude before and after the horse-riding accident that nearly severed his spine is part of the challenge --and even part of the fun -- of his absorbing memoir, "Still Me."

Reeve doesn't remember much about the day in 1995 at a Culpeper, Va., cross-country riding competition when his horse, Buck, racing toward an easy jump, unaccountably halted. Thrown forward, his hands apparently tangled in the reins, Reeve landed on his head, snapping his neck.

"Still Me" is about how it feels, having been athletic all one's life -- diving, flying, sailing, horse-riding -- to wake up completely paralyzed and dependent. It is about growing up in New Jersey trying to be "perfect" for an uncaring father, only to find oneself hooked up to life-support machines, assaulted by feelings of humiliation, terror and suicide.

"Maybe we should let me go," Reeve mouths (he can't speak yet) to his wife, Dana, shortly after the accident. "Dana started crying," he recalls. "Then she added the words that saved my life: 'You're still you. And I love you.' If she had looked away or paused or hesitated even slightly, or if I had felt there was a sense of her being -- being what? -- noble, or fulfilling some obligation to me, I don't know if I could have pulled through. Because it had dawned on me that I was going to be a huge burden to everybody, that I had ruined my life and everybody else's."

Reeve also remembered "The Man in the Box" sideshow at the state fairs he once visited as a boy. There a man had been "placed in a wooden box and buried six feet in the ground with a tube coming up to the surface so he could breathe." Looking at the man's face through a little glass window, Reeve recalls that "his eyes staring back . . . and occasionally blinking were the only signs that he was alive."

The sight of his father in a similar situation, Reeve indicates, might have terrified his 2-year-old son, Will. But because Reeve suddenly realizes his son needs him to live, the love that floods out of the silent father's face makes a difference. Immediately afterward, Will, who previously had been fearful of jumping into a swimming pool, began "making huge jumps off the side of the pool" at the nearby hotel.

His son's "new courage" in turn inspires Reeve to somehow transcend his own fears. Gradually he learns to accept his condition, take charge of his recovery and eventually astonish his doctors with such miracles as breathing for many seconds, then minutes, off the respirator.

But perhaps Reeve's greatest inspiration comes from a Jamaican aide named Juice who helps Reeve withstand "pop-offs" (sudden air- tube disconnections), learn to "sip and blow" a breath-controlled wheelchair and give his first speech in public.

When Reeve wishes that Juice could work for him permanently, the aide refuses. "My job is, I gotta help a lot of people," he tells Reeve, who adds, "That's his mission. That's why he's been there for 14 years, earning eight dollars an hour. It's his service, his giving, his gift."

Such relationships -- always fleeting before the accident -- seem to humanize and deepen the star. Reeve finds himself battling his insurance company because it routinely gives up on victims of spinal cord damage. He raises millions for the American Paralysis Association to do research in the once unthinkable field of nerve regeneration.

Reeve's description of his surprisingly varied acting career turns out to be a lively and fascinating show- biz bio in its own right. Still a teenager when he began performing, Reeve was chosen as one of two "advance" students at Juilliard (the other was Robin Williams), where a frosty but supportive drama instructor, John Houseman, took him aside to say gravely, "Mr. Reeve. It is terribly important that you become a serious classical actor. Unless, of course, they offer you a s---load of money to do something else."

From Shakespeare to soap opera, Reeve remained relatively obscure until his big break in "Superman," where he says he fashioned the role of Clark Kent after Cary Grant's performance in "Bringing Up Baby." Refusing to do other action pictures, Reeve found his career lurching from the very silly ("Switching Channels") to the very serious ("Remains of the Day"). Even when he was good, he discovers, many people didn't realize that Superman was in the movie.

Perhaps the greatest irony of "Still Me,"then, emerges as the man who onceplayed Superman becomes a superhero in his own life. He even discovers a new cause (AIDS) and a new career as director of a prize-winning HBO special with Glenn Close, "In the Gloaming."

The book is also memorable for Reeve's love of comedy, even when the joke is at his expense. During the filming of "Superman," he ran into Sir John Gielgud, whom he had met once before. Reeves recalls, "I was dressed in full Superman regalia. As (Gielgud) shook my hand he said, 'So delightful to see you. What are you doing now?' "

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