Christopher Reeve Wallpapers

Christopher Reeve Wallpapers

Christopher Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, director, producer and writer renowned for his film portrayal of Superman/Kal-El/Clark Kent in four films from 1978-1987.

In 1995, Reeve was paralyzed during an equestrian competition and was confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. Christopher Reeve became a spokesman for disabled people and a vocal supporter of stem cell research. He founded the Christopher Reeve Foundation, which has awarded over $64 million for spinal cord research and over $8 million to improve the quality of life of people living with disabilities. The Reeve-Irvine Research Center is the leading spinal cord research center in the world. He died on October 10, 2004 at Northern Westchester Hospital Center after suffering cardiac arrest brought on by infection at his Pound Ridge, NY home.
He was born in New York City to writer Franklin Reeve and journalist Barbara Lamb. In 1970 Reeve graduated from Princeton Day School in Princeton, New Jersey. He attended Cornell University as a member of the class of 1974, but left before earning his degree and began studying at the Juilliard Drama School under John Houseman. While at Juilliard, he became friends with Robin Williams, as well as with Kevin Conroy (who would later be the voice actor for the animated Batman television series).

Reeve's first big break as an actor came in 1975 when he was selected to co-star opposite Katharine Hepburn in the Broadway play A Matter Of Gravity. Reeve stayed with the play throughout its year-long run and was given very favorable reviews. He and Hepburn became very close and stayed in contact until her death in 2003. A romance was rumored, but Reeve laughed it off saying, "That was wild, that thought. She was 66 and I was 22. But that, you know, that could be fun." He did admit to having a boyhood crush on her: "When I was a kid I would have crossed the country on my hands and knees just to say hi." Reeve credited the legendary actress with giving him many valuable lessons on acting. Hepburn in turn praised her young co-star. She predicted great things for him and joked that he would "support me in my old age." Reeve is reported to have joked back, "I don't think I'll live that long, Miss Hepburn."

Reeve continued to work on the stage, as well as on the soap opera Love of Life. His first role in a Hollywood film was a small part as a submarine officer in the disaster movie Gray Lady Down in 1978.
Superman

With his good looks and tall stature at 6 ft 4 in, Reeve is said to have drawn eyes when walking into auditions. This paid off when he beat out thousands of others for the role of Superman in the 1978 film directed by Richard Donner. This film was an enormous success and inspired three sequels. Christopher Reeve is not related to George Reeves, who played Superman on television in the 1950s. George Reeves' real name was George Washington Lescher Brewster.

Although he was tall enough for the role and had the blue eyes and strong jawline, Reeve's build was decidedly unmuscular, and he began a training regimen under former British weightlifting champion Dave Prowse, who, a short time later, gained fame as the man who would give physical form to Darth Vader in the Star Wars films. Reeve had a driver who was paid to take him to the gym no matter how much he cursed and resisted. The training regimen consisted of several hours at the gym every day, and eating two of everything; two breakfasts, two lunches, and two dinners. Reeve put on 30 pounds of muscle to his thin 190 lb frame, and put on even more for Superman III. Once he reached the peak of his bulk, he decided to put more emphasis on cardiovascular workouts and became leaner.


Superman was the kind of part Reeve usually disdained (and he admitted that he was not exactly a Superman fan or a comic book fan in general). He once said, "I want to challenge myself in my roles, not run around on screen with a machine gun." However, Reeve did find that he could play the character with depth and challenge himself with the role. He said that there had to be something more to the Clark Kent character, otherwise you just had a "pair of glasses standing in for a character." He successfully split the Superman and Clark Kent roles into two completely different characters. Christopher Reeve essentially redefined Superman — no small feat, considering what a global icon the character was and still is.

To this day, many fans still consider Reeve's portrayal of Superman to be the definitive on screen interpretation of the role.

After Superman

Throughout his career, Reeve maintained a good reputation for being a courteous, polite, and professional actor among his collaborators. In short: easy to work with. In 1980, Reeve co-starred with Jane Seymour in Somewhere in Time, a time travel romance. Although this film was not popular at the time it was released, it has since inspired a wide "cult" following. Seymour thought so highly of Reeve in the 1990s that she named one of her twin boys Kristopher, in honor of Reeve and singer Kris Kristofferson.

In 1984, Reeve won critical acclaim for his role as a 19th century southern lawyer in The Bostonians. He often said this was the best movie role of his career. It was immediately afterwards that he scored another triumph on the stage, this time in London. Reeve had always been fond of England and jumped at the chance to co-star with his friend Vanessa Redgrave in The Aspern Papers, an adaptation of a Henry James novel. Critics were astounded by his performance, and local headlines blurted "Superman can act!"

In 1987 Reeve traveled to Chile, at that time under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, to stand in solidarity with several dozen actors and writers who had been threatened with death for their left-wing views. He was later given the Bernardo O'Higgins Condecoration in 1998 by then Foreign Minister Soledad Alvear for this action. Alvear said at the time: "He visited our country in 1987 during very difficult times in our history. He came to lead a support celebration for the 77 national artists who were threatened and this action meant him two awards from international human rights organizations, but we hadn't had the chance of thanking him for his noble gesture". In the same year, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, a movie demonstrating his anti-nuclear political ideology, was released. Reeve helped write the screenplay because he wanted to send a powerful message about world peace. The plot focused on Superman ridding the world of nuclear weapons. Superman IV was a box office failure, due in part to mishandling of the film's budget off camera, and Reeve jokingly recommended that people skip it and only watch the first two movies and maybe the third. More grief followed when two screenwriters accused Reeve of plagiarism, which he denied; they tried to sue him, but the case was dismissed in Reeve's favor because the screenwriters had no proof to validate their claims. This was said to have influenced his decision not to reprise the role of Superman for future projects. Also in 1987, Reeve starred in the gritty Street Smart as a reporter who falsified a story about a pimp. Morgan Freeman was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role as the pimp "Fast Black", but Reeve's performance was dismissed by the critics; one even mocked, "Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane... it's Newsman!"

In 1988, Reeve co-starred with Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner in the comedy Switching Channels. This was a modern-day remake of the 1930s stageplay The Front Page and also provided a rare comedic role for Reeve. However, the movie flopped at the box office and Reeve next turned up doing movies for cable and television. Reeve was able to again showcase his comedic talents alongside all-star comedy veterans Carol Burnett, Marilu Henner, and John Ritter in 1992's Noises Off, a slapstick film version of the Michael Frayn stage play of the same name. The film also reteamed him with Deathtrap co-star Michael Caine. He also had the role of an American ambassador in The Remains of the Day, which some believed would revitalize his film career, but when the film came out his performance was hardly acknowledged. In his career, he was offered but turned down many roles such as Richard Gere's role in American Gigolo (reportedly because he found the film's subject matter "distasteful"), Mel Gibson's role as Fletcher Christian in the 1984 film The Bounty (reportedly because of the bad experience he had with Monsignor) and Arnold Schwarzenegger's role in The Running Man in favor of films he found more meaningful. His last theatrical film was director John Carpenter's 1995 remake of Village of the Damned, where he played the local everyman doctor protagonist trying to save the town from the demonic children, the leader of whom was his "daughter".

Reeve had a great love for the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He served as an apprentice and on its Board of Directors. Despite having become famous for his Superman role, he returned every summer until his accident. Reeve often faulted fellow actors for shunning stagework, claiming they were dishonoring their craft. He appeared in over 150 plays during his career.

Shortly before his accident, Reeve played a paralyzed police officer in the HBO special Above Suspicion. His wife was also in the movie playing a female detective who smoked.

After his accident, he directed and starred in several important movies about disabilities such as In the Gloaming and The Brooke Ellison Story. He also starred in a remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rear Window, and, in a nod to his former role as Superman, was a recurring guest star on the teen series Smallville, about Superman's adolescence. This role was cut short upon his death.

Death

In 2003 and 2004, Reeve fought off a number of serious infections believed to have originated from the bone marrow. He recovered from three that could have been fatal. On October 10, 2004 after suffering cardiac arrest brought on by an infection and falling into a coma, Reeve died of heart failure at the age of 52. In the week prior to his death, Reeve was being treated at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York for a pressure ulcer, a common ailment for people with paralysis, that had subsequently become seriously infected.

By the time of his death, Reeve had regained partial movement in his fingers and toes as well as feeling throughout his body, claiming he could feel pin pricks anywhere and could again differentiate between hot and cold temperatures. He believed strongly that continuous physical exercise could help regenerate the nervous system of an individual with paralysis. He kept his body strong so that it would be able to support him if a cure was found.

Even before his death, Reeve's efforts to spread awareness for spinal cord injuries had won him the cultural status of a real life hero, not unlike his cinematic counterpart, Superman. Reeve humbly insisted that there was nothing truly heroic about him or what had happened to him, but that he was merely another human being dealing with an obstacle that life had placed in his path. Nevertheless, fans and admirers have taken to calling him "the real Man of Steel" and "the real Superman." He is survived by his parents, Barbara Lamb and Franklin Reeve, and his three children, Matthew (born 1979), Alexandra (born 1982) and Will (born 1992).


FILMOGRAPHY
Filmography

* Superman: The Movie (1978)
* The Muppets Go Hollywood (1979)
* Somewhere in Time (1980)
* Superman II (1980)
* Deathtrap (1982)
* Monsignor (1982)
* Superman III (1983)
* The Aviator (1985)
* The Bostonians (1985)
* Street Smart (1987)
* Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987)
* Switching Channels (1988)
* Noises Off (1992)
* The Remains of the Day (1993)
* Speechless (1994)
* Above Suspicion (1995)
* Village of the Damned (1995)
* Rear Window (1998)
* Smallville (2003-2004) (Guest Star)
* The Brooke Ellison Story (2004) (director)
* Everyone's Hero (2006) (director)

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