HEROES: ON-SCREEN AND OFF

Well before his accident, Reeve starred in 1983'sThe Bostonians.

AA: I saw Rear Window and I thought it was a wonderful performance. What was the experience like for you? Was it too tough to go through again?

CR: No, actually, the harder it is the better I do. We were doing 12 and 14 hour days, and I always showed up early, and usually between set-ups I didn't leave the set, because that makes the crew work faster.

AA: Yeah, I noticed that.

CR: I'm lucky, as a creative outlet, I haven't lost my career. I don't know how many more opportunities for acting will come along. I'm doing more directing now. But really the purpose of Rear Window was to show a disabled person as a hero. You think of Gary Sinese's character in Forrest Gump, and right up until the very end, he's very bitter. I don't want an image of disabled people as angry and consumed with hatred or self-loathing. I want to include disabled people in the mainstream of society and to show that this guy could use his brains and his stamina to outwit a villain.

AA: Your own personal sense of heroism has shifted since the accident.

CR: Absolutely. I used to think that heroes were people that were really larger than life, Lindbergh and sports figures, legends, etc. Now I think a hero is really a very ordinary person who manages to rise to extraordinary circumstances, and usually goes unrewarded. Some people set out to be heroes, fastest land speed record or the first one to swim around the world. That's fine, but the real heroes are more unsung. They are just getting by day to day and having the courage to do so.

DAY-TO-DAY

		Walking on the treadmill requires a harness and several assistants.

AA: What are some of the things you do during the day?

CR: Well, I can't get up and get out of bed and brush my teeth and go downstairs and have a cup of coffee and start my day. It takes a nurse and an aide to wash me, to move my limbs around.

AA: Do you feel anything during that?

CR: In certain places, yeah. Mainly in my left leg.

AA: Is that experienced as pain?

CR: No, no, no it's very, very gratifying because I will have laid for 6-7 hours without moving. When I go to bed, I don't move for 6 hours. I used to have to be turned every 2 hours but not any more.

AA: Why not anymore?

CR: Because I don't get any skin wounds, which is a problem you have early on when you have a spinal cord injury. But over the years, with the use of zinc oxide, my skin's very tough. Now I've got to be washed, I've got to be arranged, I've got to be dressed, I've got to be fed. And then I work a group of muscles with electrodes for about an hour while I'm still in bed. So I wake up about a quarter to 8, and I'm probably out of bed by 11. And then I do office work.

AA: And how do you do that?

CR: Well, I have 3 assistants who help. I make phone calls, I dictate letters, I do all that, and that'll take me up until about lunchtime, and then I do more physical therapy. That's the breathing part of my day, where I come off the hose and I breathe in on my own. I do that for about 2 or 3 hours and I can talk at the same time.

AA: Wow.

To propel his wheelchair, Reeve blows into this special tube.

CR: I do that to build up more strength in the diaphragm. And then in the afternoon, when my youngest son comes home, usually there's a time I spend with him. He beats me at chess … he's 7… or we do something outside. And then it's dinnertime and then the whole process of going to bed has to start at 9:30. I haven't been to bed at 9:30 since I was 11, but…

AA: It takes longer now.

CR: It takes 2-1/2 hours to get put away. It's really like if you take a stream and you put a log in it, the stream will go over the log, but it will also find ways around it. And that's really a metaphor for what happens with life.
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Photos: UCLA