"That was the moment I realized I was completely alone," confesses Will Reeve (32). The ABC News correspondent in New York refers to the untimely death of his parents, the legendary cinematic Superman Christopher Reeve in 2004 and his second wife, Dana Morosini, two years later. This story dates back to May 1995.
The big-screen superhero was participating in a show jumping competition when his horse abruptly stopped and fell headfirst. The consequence was a spinal cord fracture that left him paralyzed from the neck down. The actor contemplated suicide, but his wife showed him one of those rare loves seldom seen in this world. "I will support you in whatever you want to do because it's your life and your decision. But I want you to know that I will be with you forever, for life, until the end. You are still you, and I love you," she wrote in his biography Still Me.
On the 20th anniversary of the actor's death, the documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story will premiere in our country on October 10. In an interview with the newspaper ABC, Will recalls that "it must have been very tough for mom to know what she had lost" and adds in the documentary that when his mother died from lung cancer in March 2006 at the age of 44, "that was the moment I realized I was completely alone."
Undoubtedly, they were terrible moments for the family. William was protected by his older siblings, Matthew (42) and Alexandra (40), from Christopher's first marriage with Gae Exton. At one point, the daughter recounts, "I hope people take this away: that there can be a bright Hollywood, but in reality, the values and heroes are the people who survive in these ordinary circumstances, find strength, come together, and that's really what our family has been taught from the beginning."
From the get-go, actor Robin Williams was the first to help the Reeve family in every way. Understandable considering that Christopher and Robin met as acting students at the Juilliard School in New York in the 1970s. "Our father and Robin had a unique bond. They had a friendship that someone should make into a movie, but what shone in it was simply their love and mutual respect, and that never wavered," explains Will.
In this regard, another friend of Superman, Glenn Close, admits in the documentary: "If Christopher Reeve hadn't died, Robin Williams would still be with us." A harsh confession that leads us to the death of Williams on August 11, 2014, when after being diagnosed with Parkinson's, he fell into deep depression and committed suicide. Susan Sarandon was also one of his close friends.
Following Superman's actor's accident, the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation was established, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding treatments and cures for paralysis caused by spinal cord injury and other neurological disorders.
The DC universe has decided to reinvent Superman, and a new installment will be released in 2025 where the protagonist is David Corfenswet (31), a relatively unknown actor in our country who is poised to be the new Hollywood hero. Will Reeve has a cameo in the film, where interestingly he plays a journalist.