from cracked.com
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| Christopher Reeve became paralyzed when thrown from a horse on May 27, 1995. |
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| Above Suspicion |
In May of 1995, a mediocre movie called Above Suspicion quietly premiered on HBO and then slipped into obscurity. It featured Christopher Reeve as a police officer who suffers from severe depression and encourages his wife and his brother to murder him in order to collect the insurance. So what could trigger that kind of depression? Well, that's the eerie part:
Reeve's character is shot in the spine and confined to a wheelchair for the majority of the movie. Now this film was released on May 25. If for some reason you haven't committed the chronology of Christopher Reeve's life to memory, May 27 was the day he was paralyzed in a horseback riding accident. The movie where he plays a paraplegic was released just two days before his accident landed him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
Despite the movie never being in any danger of winning awards or even showing up in theaters, Reeve took the role seriously, preparing by spending a couple of days at a spinal cord trauma unit and learning what it's like to live life in a wheelchair. He even did interviews promoting the movie, stating, "A couple of days at the spinal cord trauma unit and you can see how easily it can happen."
Then, of course, it did happen almost immediately, though in the film, the big reveal is that Reeve was only pretending to be paralyzed to build an elaborate trap for his wife and brother, who were cheating on him behind his back. A pretty morally reprehensible move, even in the context of sibling adultery. Apparently karma thought so, too, but had a hard time differentiating between characters and the actors playing them.
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