Word: superman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pauses as a new thought occurs to him: "You know, it's the way I used to feel when I would go to see sick people or handicapped people in the Superman years. I was called on to go everywhere as a kind of symbol--to Sloan-Kettering to see terminally ill children, to the Make a Wish Foundation, where the kid's last request is to meet me, you know, even though I'm not Superman. Indulge in the fantasy of meeting the person who plays Superman. Sometimes they didn't even make a distinction. I could show...
...bothers me when people say, 'You played Superman; now you are Superman.' They mean well, but they don't know what I go through in the middle of the night. I don't know. I guess that if part of the definition of Superman is that you keep on going even if you feel like shit, then I suppose I do reasonably well...
...know, it's easier to live as an illusion than as a real person. When you are cast as a larger-than-life figure like Superman, there's no place to turn to from people's expectations. At the moment, people are investing a great deal of hope in me. That's very kind, very flattering. But it's more difficult for me to accept that because I'm more real to them than the fictional version was in the past. Even the injury creates a role...
...hills with picture-book views.) After graduating from Cornell in 1974, he studied acting at Juilliard with John Houseman. He made his first Broadway appearance with Katharine Hepburn in A Matter of Gravity, an odd play in which he received quite good notices. In 1978 came the movie Superman; he initially thought the role so silly, so beneath theater, that he almost skipped the tryout. Characteristically, he wanted to work hard to do the part right. On the set he approached the veteran Gene Hackman, who was playing Superman's comic-villain archenemy, and asked if he wanted to rehearse...
Reeve often speaks of the accident as a "failure," an instant of "humiliation and embarrassment." He says, "I used to worry when I was making Superman that I'd mess up. You know: SUPERMAN HIT BY BUS. That in a headline." He is inclined to be hard on himself. "In the first days," he says, "I kept thinking, 'I've ruined my life.' But you only get one. You can't say, 'I've spoiled this one. Can I have another, please?' You feel as though you're a creature from another planet. Because here on earth people walk around...