:eek:

:(

very very sad:( :( :( :(

'Superman' Christopher Reeve Dies at 52

Published: 10/11/04



MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. (AP) - Actor Christopher Reeve, who soared through the air and leapt tall buildings as "Superman," turned personal tragedy into a public crusade, becoming the nation's most recognizable spokesman for spinal cord research - from a wheelchair. Reeve went into cardiac arrest Saturday while at his Pound Ridge home, then fell into a coma and died Sunday at a hospital surrounded by his family, his publicist said. He was 52.

His advocacy for stem cell research helped it emerge as a major campaign issue between President Bush and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry. His name was even mentioned by Kerry during the second presidential debate Friday evening.

Reeve, left paralyzed from the neck down after a riding accident and who pushed for funding to help others like himself, was hospitalized the following day. In the last week Reeve had developed a serious systemic infection from a pressure wound, a common complication for people living with paralysis.

Dana Reeve, Christopher's wife, thanked her husband's personal staff of nurses and aides, "as well as the millions of fans from around the world who have supported and loved my husband over the years."

Reeve's life changed completely after he broke his neck in May 1995 when he was thrown from his horse during an equestrian competition in Culpeper, Va.

Enduring months of therapy to allow him to breathe for longer and longer periods without a respirator, Reeve emerged to lobby Congress for better insurance protection against catastrophic injury and to move an Academy Award audience to tears with a call for more films about social issues.

"Hollywood needs to do more," he said in the March 1996 Oscar awards appearance. "Let's continue to take risks. Let's tackle the issues. In many ways our film community can do it better than anyone else. There is no challenge, artistic or otherwise, that we can't meet."

He returned to directing, and even returned to acting in a 1998 production of "Rear Window," a modern update of the Hitchcock thriller about a man in a wheelchair who becomes convinced a neighbor has been murdered. Reeve won a Screen Actors Guild award for best actor.

"I was worried that only acting with my voice and my face, I might not be able to communicate effectively enough to tell the story," Reeve said. "But I was surprised to find that if I really concentrated, and just let the thoughts happen, that they would read on my face. With so many close-ups, I knew that my every thought would count."

In 2000, Reeve was able to move his index finger, and a specialized workout regimen made his legs and arms stronger. He also regained sensation in other parts of his body. He vowed to walk again.

"I refuse to allow a disability to determine how I live my life. I don't mean to be reckless, but setting a goal that seems a bit daunting actually is very helpful toward recovery," Reeve said.

Before the accident, his athletic, 6-foot-4-inch frame and love of adventure made him a natural, if largely unknown, choice for the title role in the first "Superman" movie in 1978. He insisted on performing his own stunts.

Although he reprised the role three times, Reeve often worried about being typecast as an action hero.

Though he owed his fame to it, Reeve made a concerted effort to, as he often put it, "escape the cape." He played an embittered, crippled Vietnam veteran in the 1980 Broadway play "Fifth of July," a lovestruck time-traveler in the 1980 movie "Somewhere in Time," and an aspiring playwright in the 1982 suspense thriller "Deathtrap."

More recent films included John Carpenter's "Village of the Damned," and the HBO movies "Above Suspicion" and "In the Gloaming," which he directed. Among his other film credits are "The Remains of the Day," "The Aviator," and "Morning Glory."

Reeve was born Sept. 25, 1952, in New York City, son of a novelist and a newspaper reporter. About the age of 10, he made his first stage appearance - in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Yeoman of the Guard" at McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.

After graduating from Cornell University in 1974, he landed a part as coldhearted bigamist Ben Harper on the television soap opera "Love of Life." He also performed frequently on stage, winning his first Broadway role as the grandson of a character played by Katharine Hepburn in "A Matter of Gravity."

Reeve's first movie role was a minor one in the submarine disaster movie "Gray Lady Down," released in 1978. "Superman" soon followed. Reeve was selected for the title role from among about 200 aspirants.

Active in many sports, Reeve owned several horses and competed in equestrian events regularly. Witnesses to the 1995 accident said Reeve's horse had cleared two of 15 fences during the jumping event and stopped abruptly at the third, flinging the actor headlong to the ground. Doctors said he fractured the top two vertebrae in his neck and damaged his spinal cord.

While filming "Superman" in London, Reeve met modeling agency co-founder Gae Exton, and the two began a relationship that lasted several years. The couple had two sons, but were never wed.

Reeve later married Dana Morosini; they had one son, Will, 11. Reeve also is survived by his mother, Barbara Johnson; his father, Franklin Reeve; his brother, Benjamin Reeve; and his two children from his relationship with Exton, Matthew, 25, and Alexandra, 21.

No plans for a funeral were immediately announced.

A few months after the accident, he told interviewer Barbara Walters that he considered suicide in the first dark days after he was injured. But he quickly overcame such thoughts when he saw his children.

"I could see how much they needed me and wanted me... and how lucky we all are and that my brain is on straight

Not Superman! :( I was just talking about him yesterday.

Wesley Snipes' slump examined
 

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printsto...inment/2817393

Cautionary tale on Wesley Snipes' career slump, particularly in why he's pissed a lot of us off. I found this passage particularly interesting:


Others see a tinge of racial politics amid the bad breaks and bad choices. Snipes, after all, broke through casting barriers as a dark-skinned black man starring in mainstream Hollywood pictures. But as he became more successful, he stumbled, offending some in his African-American female fan base. Not only did he publicly profess his love for Asian women, he is rarely seen at prominent black events or award ceremonies.

"Wesley is a treasure, and it would be nice if he were connected to the black community in a more public way," said Marvet Britto, a publicist who has known Snipes for years. "No matter how famous or infamous you are, we will support you -- if you are someone who is a part of the fabric of the community ... With the right project and focus, people will quickly fall back in love with him as he is the original chocolate heartthrob."

Re: Wesley Snipes' slump examined
 

Never been a HUGE Snipes fan. However, it would be great to see him in more films like, Down in the Delta.

^^
I'm also not a huge Snipes aficionada, but you make a point. I liked Ms. Britto's quote, but frankly, you could also say that about people who aren't necessarily part of the community's fabric -- look how many of us rallied around Ohhhjjjj :rolleyes: and Kobester :rolleyes:, and I bet that many people would come to Eldrick Woods' defense if he found himself in a similar bind, despite some of his attitudes and his marriage to Elin Nordegren.

Re: Wesley Snipes' slump examined
 

That line literally made me LOL. :rolleyes:

True! And while I think the big difference is a public, VERBAL denouncement of intimicay with AA women by Wesley (I know actions speak louder (i.e. OJ and Kobe) but rememebr sticks and stones...the words say an awful lot, too), I wonder why we still support actors like Taye Diggs, whom I recall also publicly giving Black women the finger a few years back. He betta call Wesley.

What did Taye have to say about Black women?

Hell, I know that some of my sorors aren't feeling Taye Diggs and his new show, because of the fact that the character is chasing everything but a sistah. :p

In addition to the fact that he is NOT married to a sista. However, he is always in Black films.

Lawd, help her!!
 

From my PeopleDaily...


http://i.timeinc.net/people/i/2004/0...letourneau.jpg

Mary Kay Letourneau and the former student she went to prison for having sex with are engaged to be married, the ex-schoolteacher, sporting a ring, told Larry King on CNN Monday night.

No date for the nuptials has been announced.

Letourneau also said on Larry King Live that, at the time the 12-year-old Vili Fualaau was her student, she did not know that having sex with a sixth-grader was a felony. Letourneau was 34 when the relationship began, in 1996.

Re: Lawd, help her!!
 

You know, this woman is just plain nutz! My little brother says that this youngster must have "The Magic Stick"....he straight turned her out and made her cuckoo cuckoo for coca coca puffs!!

^^
To me, what the f*** would a 21-year-old have to offer a grown woman other than the obvious? I mean, he's just starting out on life, betcha he doesn't have a college degree or a good job.