When Christopher Reeve was thrown from a horse in 1995 and paralyzed from the neck down, it shocked Hollywood and the world. Here was everyone’s favorite Superman, injured so badly that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, breathing only with the help of a ventilator. By ‘95, Reeve’s star had faded, and the last role he played before the accident was that of a paraplegic man in an HBO movie called Above Suspicion. The role left Reeve with a strong impression, and in a way, foreshadowed what would happen.
Real Life Imitating Art In The Scariest Way
Just six days after Above Suspicion's debut on HBO, Reeve’s accident occurred. I never realized until now what Reeve learned from making the movie and how that affected his life after the accident. It makes the story even more tragic, but also, like everything Reeve did in life after being paralyzed, it has a nugget of hope.
As reported this week by People, Reeve spoke to Oprah Winfrey in 1998 about the accident and about the movie. In the interview, he opened up about how much making Above Suspicion affected him, and it's honestly pretty chilling. Reeve told Oprah:
I went to a rehab center, and I worked with the people there so I could simulate being a paraplegic, and every day, I'd get my car and drive away and go, 'Thank god that's not me.'
Of course, that would be him just months after filming wrapped. It couldn’t have helped but to have taught Reeve a lesson. He continued:
I remember, in a way, the smugness of that, as if I was, you know, privileged in some way. But the point is, we're all one great big happy family, and any one of us could get hurt at any moment.
As with everything Reeve did in the final decade of his life (he died in 2004, about nine years after the accident), he somehow found a silver lining:
That taught me a really big lesson about complacency. We should never walk by somebody in a wheelchair and be afraid of them or think of them as a stranger. It could be us. In fact, it is us.
I’ve often marveled at Reeve’s ability to stay positive in light of all he went through, and I think that is what not just me, but the whole world really remembers about Reeve. There were certainly dark moments for the actor, as he talked about in Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which you can watch with an HBO Max subscription, but publicly, he was also positive.
As he advocated for stem cell research and disability rights, he was always upbeat, talking about how lucky he was to be alive and how important life is for everyone. We can all learn from Reeve a thing or two about appreciations of life.
