Christopher Reeve

Reeve in his lifetime dated quite a few women including Katherine Hepburn before finally tying the knot with Gae Exton. The couple was blessed with two children, Matthew Exton Reeve and Alexandra Exton Reeve. Reeve and Exton headed for splits in 1987.

In April 1992, Reeve remarried Dana Morosini after months of dating. The couple welcomed their first child, William Elliot ‘Will’ Reeve on June 7, 1992.

Reeve met with a serious horse riding accident in 1995 that left him paralysed from neck down and wheelchair bound. Such was the intensity of the accident that he broke his first and second vertebrae thus detaching his skull from his spinal cord.

Christopher Reeve was born on September 25, 1952 in New York City to Barbara Pitney and Franklin D’Olier Reeve. While his mother was a journalist, his father served as a teacher, novelist, poet and scholar. He had a younger brother, Benjamin. His parents divorced when he was young. Reeve and his brother moved with their mother who remarried Tristam B Johnson in 1959.

Reeve attended Princeton Day School. Academically brilliant, he excellent in athletics and theatre as well. Such as his brilliance in sports that he was on the honor roll and played soccer, baseball, tennis, and hockey.

At the age of nine, Reeve found his passion for acting after he was cast in an amateur version of the play, ‘The Yeomen of the Guard’. By 1967, he was working as an apprentice at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The following year, he received an offer to work professionally at Harvard Summer Repertory Theatre Company. He graduated from Princeton Day School in 1970.

Post graduation, Reeve acted in plays in Boothbay, Maine and planned to go to New York City to find a career in theatre. However, upon his mother’s insistence, he applied for college and accepted an offer from Cornell University.

At Cornell, Reeve continued to fuel his passion for dramatics and theatre. He acted in several plays including ‘Waiting for Godot’, ‘Segismundo in Life Is a Dream’, ‘Hamlet in Rosencrantz’, ‘Guildenstern Are Dead’ and The Winter's Tale.

Impressed by his acting talent, Stark Hesseltine, a high-powered agent, proposed to establish Reeve’s acting career and represent him. Monthly visits to New York City and meetings with casting agents and producers helped Reeve find his first work in a production of ‘Forty Carats’ with Eleanor Parker.

Artistically endowed, Reeve soon received a full-season contract with the San Diego Shakespeare Festival. Reeve played prominent roles in several plays including ‘Richard III’, ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’, and ‘Love's Labour's Lost’.

In his final year at college, Reeve took a three-month leave of absence. He travelled to Glasgow wherein he immersed himself in the country’s theatre culture. He then moved to Paris and absorbed European theatre culture, keenly observing the performances by established stage actors and imbibing in the goodness. Having engrossed everything, he returned to US.

Reeve most iconic career work came with the Superman film series, wherein he played lead role of ‘Superman/Clark Kent’. Reeve did full justice to his role as Superman and Clark Kent, perfectly switching between the two vastly different personalities. The film garnered immense success and was a major worldwide blockbuster, grossing more than $300 million worldwide. He instantly gained an international star status.