TMC
12-17-2004, 09:28 PM
Christopher Reeve turned down a lot of major movies outside of Superman during his career. He turned down the leads in "American Gigolo", "The Running Man", "Total Recall", "Body Heat", "Romancing the Stone", "The Bounty", and even a part after his accident in the form of Gary Oldman's eventual role in "Hannibal." Apparently, Reeve didn't want to do other major movie roles besides Superman because he wanted to do more "challenging roles."
I always figured that if you want to have longevity and clout in show business, if you take on more high profile roles in order to allow you to do more "challenging", artsy roles. If you look at Christopher Reeve's filmography (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001659/), a lot of his non-Superman, pre-accident work were relegated to being straight to television. As a matter of fact, Reeve only agreed to do "Superman IV" if the studios would fund a gritty pet project of his called "Street Smart."
To be fair, Christopher Reeve was always a stage actor at heart. He was once quoted as saying as he didn't want to be relegated to being seen walking around aimlessly with a machine gun.
I always figured that if you want to have longevity and clout in show business, if you take on more high profile roles in order to allow you to do more "challenging", artsy roles. If you look at Christopher Reeve's filmography (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001659/), a lot of his non-Superman, pre-accident work were relegated to being straight to television. As a matter of fact, Reeve only agreed to do "Superman IV" if the studios would fund a gritty pet project of his called "Street Smart."
To be fair, Christopher Reeve was always a stage actor at heart. He was once quoted as saying as he didn't want to be relegated to being seen walking around aimlessly with a machine gun.