Christopher Reeve's words speak to identity, courage and the real difference between physical limitation and personal strength. Best known for playing Superman on screen, Reeve became a wheelchair user in 1995 after a horse-riding accident left him paralysed from the neck down. "The fact that I was in a wheelchair and dependent on others for almost every aspect of my life had not diminished the fact that I was and always would be… their Superman," he wrote. This line comes from his own memoir, Still Me, in a passage describing what happened backstage at the 1996 Academy Awards, where he made a surprise appearance to present an award less than a year after his accident. His understanding of himself, it turns out, was never actually limited to what his body could or could not physically do, and the way he arrived at that realisation, through the reaction of ordinary people working that night, makes the quote considerably richer than it first appears.
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