- NEW YORK (Reuters) -- "Superman"
actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed when he fell from a horse nine years
ago, has died in a New York hospital of heart failure, his publicist said
on Monday.
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- Reeve, 52, went into a coma on Saturday when he suffered
a heart attack during treatment for an infected pressure wound and died
in Northern Westchester Hospital on Sunday afternoon without regaining
consciousness, publicist Wesley Combs told reporters.
-
- Reeve's wife Dana issued a statement thanking "the
millions of fans around the world who have supported and loved my husband
over the years."
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- Reeve, confined to a wheelchair since his riding accident
in 1995, had in recent years campaigned for the rights of the disabled
and for stepped-up research into the treatment of spinal cord injuries.
-
- Reeve's family asked that donations be made in his honor
to the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, formed in 1999 to boost
collaboration between experts working on treatments for spinal cord damage.
-
- An accomplished rider who owned several horses, Reeve
suffered multiple injuries including two shattered neck vertebrae when
he was thrown from his horse at an equestrian event in Commonwealth Park
in Virginia.
-
- Doctors initially predicted that he would never have
any feeling or movement below his head. But his foundation's Web site,
www.ChristopherReeve.org, said he had experienced a degree of recovery
that his doctors considered "remarkable."
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- BORN IN NEW YORK
-
- Born on Sept. 25, 1952, in New York City, where he continued
to live as an adult, Reeve was a prototypical handsome leading man on stage
and screen.
-
- The son of an English professor and his journalist wife,
Reeve attended the Julliard school in New York City and graduated from
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
-
- He began his acting career in summer stock and appeared
on the television soap opera "Love of Life" while still in college.
-
- Reeve debuted on Broadway in "A Matter of Gravity"
in 1976, playing Katharine Hepburn's grandson, and later starred in Lanford
Wilson's "Fifth of July," in which he portrayed embittered Kenneth
Talley, a gay, crippled Vietnam War vet.
-
- Despite his theater credentials and work on television,
Reeve is best known as the hero of the "Superman" films.
-
- He was a virtual unknown when he was chosen from 200
candidates to become the big screen's incarnation of 1978's "Superman,"
in which he played fumbling Clark Kent who at will turns into the flying
superhero.
-
- In 1993 he appeared in the Merchant and Ivory hit "The
Remains of the Day," which was filmed in the English countryside.
-
- But even there, it was hard to shrug off his superhero
image.
-
- "It is very strange to walk into the House and Hound,
some pub from the 15th century in the middle of Wilshire someplace, then
-- 'Aye, it's Superman, here he comes!"' he said in an 1993 interview
on Cable News Network.
-
- Earlier movies include "Gray Lady Down," "Somewhere
in Time," "Switching Channels," "The Bostonians"
and "Deathtrap."
-
- Reeve and his wife Dana had one son, Will, now 12, and
he had two children from a previous relationship -- Matthew, 25, and Alexandra,
21.
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