Super Dad: Superman Star Christopher Reeve's Family Break Silence on His Tragic But Hope-Filled Life After Being Paralyzed — 'He Was Clear-Eyed It Was a Fluke'
Christopher Reeve's life and career is being documented in a new movie released next month.
Oct. 25 2024, Published 6:40 p.m. ET
Superman star Christopher Reeve's family have opened up about the star’s tragic life - 20 years after his death.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the actor’s children feature in a new movie about the legendary actor, who was paralyzed from the neck down following a horse riding accident in 1995.
Reeve was left paralyzed after horse riding accident.
His family tell how Reeve, was just 42 at the time, feared he would become a "burden" to his family - and his mother was in favour of letting him die.
His lawyer daughter Alexandra revealed her stepmother and Reeve’s second wife Dana was the person who kept him alive.
Alexandra, 40, reveals: "She said, 'I'm going to say this one time. It's your choice because it's your life. But you are still you, and I love you."
Reeve with wife Dana who he credits for saving his life.
"He'd been reminded that he was the same person, and he still had this family around him that loved him and wanted him and needed him, that he would still have value.
"Dana really was the one who helped him realise that. He said, 'Dana saved me.'"
Suddenly, the strong father, who’d raced them down ski slopes and hit tennis balls at them as hard as possible, was confined to a wheelchair.
From that tragedy, though, they found comfort that he was still alive.
Reeve became a huge star following his appearance in 1978 Superman movie.
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Reeve in his Superman heyday.
If the break in his neck had been one inch further to the left, he would have died.
Alexandra says: "He never blamed the horse. I went back to riding. He was very clear-eyed that it was a really s***ty fluke.
"But it could have been a fluke in the other direction and he could have died on the spot."
Alexandra, her brother Matthew, stepbrother and Dana’s son Will, now 32, got to spend more time sitting with their father following his accident.
Speaking to The Sun ahead of the release of Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Matthew, 44, said: "For him and for us it all became about really being grateful for being together and for having each other, and we spent a lot of time sitting in his office just talking.
"He always had sage advice and supportive words."
Reeve became the most high-profile advocate for the paralyzed community, raising millions for research and campaigning for better rights for disabled people.
He continued acting, starring in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window in 1998, and directed films.
Some of his nerves found new pathways so that he regained the movement of his feet and left hand.
He never gave up hope, that one day he would walk again.
But in October 2004 an infection led to sepsis and, after falling into a coma, his fight for life came to an end, at the age of just 52.
In a cruel twist of fate, the Reeve family's agony was not over.
Eighteen months later Dana, 44, died from lung cancer, leaving Will “all alone”, aged just 13, but Alexandra and Matthew became his support network.
And all three children, who are very close, are now directors of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
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