Christopher Reeve: Politically motivated

Christopher Reeve is now as famous for surviving a horrendous riding accident as for his Superman films, but disability has not cowed him. Indeed, as he tells David Usborne, it has given him reason to make trouble for the US government

Monday 21 July 2003 00:00 BST
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"Where do you want to go? The front room, or maybe to my office?" We are in the kitchen of Christopher Reeve's wood-shingled home, hidden up a narrow drive near the well-heeled village of Bedford, about an hour north of New York City. Dolly, his head nurse ever since his catastrophic horse-riding accident eight years ago, has just finished doing his make-up. The brown eyebrows are artfully drawn in to help cover the effects of his alopecia, and he is looking his best for our photographer. When Christopher smiles, which he does often, there is still a disarming handsomeness in his features.

He blows into the stem that controls the movement of his wheelchair, and we head to the office. He still needs a couple of moments to get comfortable. A male assistant lets him sip through a straw from a mug of Earl Grey, and he positions his chair as close to me as possible, suggesting that I put the recorder on his thigh. He has one final worry. Isn't his torso leaning a little to the left? The assistant reassures him that he is quite vertical. Then comes one of those grins. "But don't worry, I do lean to the left!"

There is nothing sad or morose about Reeve, who was left paralysed from the neck down after falling from his horse. If his body remains mostly moribund below the shoulders - although the progress he has made has astonished his doctors - his schedule is packed. He gives motivational talks; helps to run, with his wife Dana, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, which distributes grants for treatment to paralysis sufferers; meets frequently with politicians; and continues working in the film business and cheerleading his three children. Last Friday, he was off to watch his daughter Alexandra play a match on the Yale polo team. And we haven't even mentioned the several hours a day he spends in physical therapy, mostly in the specially equipped gym through another door out of his kitchen.

Which means that he has an awful lot on his mind. Today, he wants to talk about England, where he once lived for 10 years; about the old Superman movies - there was Superman, released 25 years ago, and then three sequels - as well as rumours of a new Superman. We discuss his children and also his work lobbying against a threatened ban in the United States on stem-cell research. It is his lobbying endeavours that get him started on another subject that exercises him more than any other: the state of politics in America. Which he deplores.

He has been so vocal in trying to stop Congress from imposing a ban on human- embryo stem-cell research, which holds out hope for cures not only for people suffering from paralysis but also from scores of other ailments, from heart disease to Alzheimer's, and even burns, that he has often been asked whether he might consider running for office. The answer is that he would not. His reluctance isn't born out of fear of not winning office, but out of a sense of visceral disgust with the way things work in Washington, DC.

"Our political system is so corrupt," he says. "Some of the most qualified people, some really bright, open-minded, forward- thinking and humane people, who should be in Washington, don't run out of sheer frustration. And that's a shame. Of course, there are many senators and representatives who really want to get things done and effect change, but it is almost impossible to get anything done without it getting so watered down that its either minimal at best, or, more often than not, useless.

"I am very disappointed by much of what is happening here in the US," he goes on. Though passionate about this subject, like many others, Reeve has to pace the delivery of his words with the rhythm of the ventilator beneath his chair, a hose feeding into his throat. Very occasionally, he mistimes slightly, causing a slight gulp. "I love my country as much as always, and I was proud to play Superman as emblematic of it. But I believe in tough love. I love my country but I am pretty angry about it."

Take the stem-cell debate. He pays tribute to the House of Lords in Britain that passed legislation early last year to allow funding for about 200 scientists in Cambridge to keep pushing the frontiers of stem- cell research. But he despairs of the US Congress, where an outright ban on such work has already been passed in the House of Representatives, while a similar is stalled in the Senate. It may remain so well into next year. The essential problem, he argues, is the exaggerated influence on Capitol Hill of religious conservatives in America. We get on to President Bush, and his religion, a little later.

"My point of view is that all sides, all interested parties are welcome to testify and be part of the debate. But when an important decision is being reached or under discussion, when it comes to deciding on what public policy is going to be, religions should not have a seat at the table." Those countries happily funding stem-cell research happen, meanwhile, to be those most closely allied to the US, both politically and in terms of culture and values. They include Britain, Israel, Sweden and Singapore. "These are not exactly rogue states," he jokes. "We share so much of the same culture." At least, if breakthroughs are achieved in those countries, patients around the world, including in the States, will eventually benefit. Or will they?

One version of the bill before the US Senate would make it a crime for any US citizen to try to reap the benefits from new stem-cell therapies practised abroad. "I could go to the UK, have a procedure done, arrive at Kennedy airport, get off the plane and be arrested," Reeve explains. "That would be the height of absurdity."

No one would doubt that there is a steely determination inside this man, who always prided himself on his athleticism. He used to sail - there are navigational charts on the wall of his living-room as well a paintings of racing yachts - ride horses (as the world knows), ski and dive. Shortly before his accident he was making a series about scuba-diving around the world for the ESPN sports channel. It is presumably something of this spirit of endeavour that has made him so unswerving in fighting his condition. He vowed soon after the accident that he would walk again before turning 50. He is 50 now, and it hasn't happened yet. But he still expects to leave his chair one day. He is, in other words, obstinate.

And, in our conversation, he is not quite done with politics and the scourge, as he sees it, of religious conservatism in America. And so to the man in the White House. "President Bush is a born-again Christian and that informs everything he does. When he was elected governor in Texas, he made a speech in which he declared that it was part of God's divine plan for him. I think that the way he is running this administration shows that he believes he is on some kind of mission, guided by a higher authority.

"The problem with that is that it has closed the door to debate, because someone who believes so fervently that they are on the right path and that God is showing the way is not interested in being challenged by other opinions, and I think that is really quite dangerous." From there, we slip into the issue of Iraq and his lack of surprise that it has become a "quagmire" for America.

You have to ask how someone as independent and as successful as this man kept going after waking from the accident. "Hell" is the word that he admits best describes the early days. "I was told I would never get any kind of recovery below my shoulders, and I had all kinds of problems besides that - ulcers, pneumonias, a collapsed lung, urinary-tract infections, skin breakdown and blood clots." There was also one near-death experience when his heart stopped. But he quickly started working. Even in 1996, the year after the fall, he directed In the Gloaming, a TV movie. When he was abruptly rehospitalised with two blood clots behind a knee, he had his team bring the editing machines to his bed.

Right now, he considers himself to be in good form. He has regained some movement in most of his joints and, when gravity is removed from the equation, especially in a pool, he can move both his arms and legs. "I am in the best physical shape I've been in since the injury. I am able to keep up with a demanding programme of physical therapy, and lead a pretty normal life." His last milestone was undergoing surgery for a pacemaker to stimulate his diaphragm. He is one of only five people in the US to have undergone the procedure. And he is forcing himself to breathe for what he calls "extended periods" every day without the ventilator. The idea, of course, is to free himself from the machine entirely. "It would be tragic to recover the ability to sit up and walk and not be able to breath on your own."

Of course, Reeve is, in some ways, lucky. He reportedly spends half a million dollars a year on his round-the-clock care and extensive treatments. And he admits that his celebrity gives him the chance to make a difference for other paralysis victims. "I'm in a position to try to help, and that is highly motivating. I am better placed to make a contribution than I was before." This does not mean, of course, that a day ever passes when he wishes the accident hadn't happened. "I am not that noble or that masochistic," he responds, evenly.

It is only at the end of our conversation that we finally discuss Superman. Oddly, Reeve only has one memento from those films, which are among 17 feature films he has appeared in. It is a Superman "S" that he cut from one of the capes. It is framed but languishes in his attic. But the cult of his Superman movies hasn't died. And while he salutes the fact that they have stood the test of time, especially when viewed on DVD, he also suggests that, had he not become famous all over again as the tragic paraplegic, interest in the films may have dimmed more quickly. "The line that the man who played Superman now really is Superman (by having to deal with his injuries) is an easy catchphrase, but I hear it all the time." And how does he react when people say that? "I don't know what to say."

www.christopherreeve.org

'Superman The Movie' DVD box set, £49.99

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