Christopher Reeve

Christopher D'Olier Reeve was born in New York City in 1952. He studied at Cornell University and trained at the Juilliard School under John Houseman, where his classmate and lifelong friend was Robin Williams. He began on stage, appearing on Broadway opposite Katharine Hepburn in A Matter of Gravity, and worked steadily in theatre and television before his defining role arrived.

Cast as Superman in 1978, Reeve gave the hero sincerity and the disguised Clark Kent comic delicacy, playing the part in four films and setting the standard for every portrayal since. He resisted typecasting with Somewhere in Time, Deathtrap, and The Remains of the Day. An accomplished pilot, sailor, and equestrian, he lived as adventurously off screen as on.

In May 1995 a riding accident left him paralysed from the neck down. He responded with extraordinary resolve, becoming the world's leading advocate for spinal cord injury research, founding what became the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, directing In the Gloaming, starring in Rear Window, and writing the memoir Still Me. He died of heart failure in October 2004, at fifty-two. His legacy is courage itself: a hero who proved the cape was never the point.