Why Christopher Reeve Credited His Wife With Saving His Life After Tragic Accident

Christopher Reeve, America’s Superman, is having his life chronicled in a new documentary titled Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. The film will be released on Sept. 21. A teaser for the film depicts his longtime wife’s devotion to him, which showed up when he needed it most after a horsing accident left him paralyzed. At the time he realized his new reality, he didn’t want to continue on with his life. In the trailer, he says his wife, Dana Reeve, said seven words that changed his outlook.

“‘I ruined my life and everybody else’s. I won’t be able to ski, sail, throw a ball to Will. Won’t be able to make love to Dana. Maybe we should let me go,’” he says in the trailer. “And then she said the words that saved my life: ‘You’re still you. And I love you,’” he added.

The documentary chronicles the emotional journey that portrays the late actor and his family dealt with the 1995 horseback-riding accident that left him paralyzed. Reeve died in 2004 when he was 52.

“We said goodbye, he gave this wave,” Reeve’s son Matthew, 44, says in a clip as he recalls his final exchange with his father before the accident. “That was the last time I saw him on his feet.”

In a tragic turn of events, ten months after the death of her husband, Dana announced that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. She’d never smoked cigarettes but admitted that she’d been a victim of secondhand smoke for years.

Dana would become a public advocate and use her platform to raise awareness for cancer prevention, treatment, and research. She died in 2006.

The documentary includes extensive personal footage from the Reeve family and audio clips of the late icon, viewers can feel like they are by the actor’s side before, during and after his accident.

“We knew … if we were ever going to do this, it had to be the right time and the right team,” Will said at Sundance this year about the film, “and that we were going to give over our archive, our home movies, sit for some raw and vulnerable interviews, and then place all of our trust and faith in the team that had assembled around us and see what they came back with.”