BiographyofChristopherReeve超人克里斯托弗里夫传记英文版.docx

1、BiographyofChristopherReeve超人克里斯托弗里夫传记英文版BiographyChristopher ReeveSeptember 25, 1952 - October 10, 2004Christopher Reeve was born September 25, 1952, in New York City. When he was four, his parents (journalist Barbara Johnson and writer/professor Franklin Reeve) divorced. His mother moved with sons

2、 Christopher and Benjamin to Princeton, New Jersey, and married an investment banker a few years later. After the divorce, the boys also spent substantial visitation time with their father, who writing under the name F. D. Reeve, is a noted novelist, poet, and scholar of Russian literature. While wi

3、th him, Chris and Ben were exposed to a stimulating intellectual environment that included Sunday dinners with F. D. Reeves friends: Robert Frost, Robert Penn Warren, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Meanwhile, Reeves stepfather, Tristam Johnson, generously paid tuition for the boys to attend the exclus

4、ive and academically challenging Princeton Day School. Chris was extraordinary, his mother recalled to an Asbury Park Press reporter. He was endowed with a great many extraordinary talents. He had a wonderful mind, wide-ranging interests, a willingness to take risks. He was an athlete and scholar wi

5、th a passion for acting, which began very, very early. Reeve traced his love of acting back to the early years of his childhood when he and his younger brother would climb inside cardboard grocery cartons and pretend they were pirate ships. To us they became pirate ships simply because we said they

6、were Reeve said. The ability to retain at least some of this childhood innocence is essential to fine acting. By age eight, he had appeared in school plays, become interested in music, and was taking piano lessons. At age nine, he was picked to be in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Yeoman of the Guard

7、 for Princetons professional theater, the McCarter Theatre. While I was growing up, Reeve recalls, I never once asked myself, Who am I? or What am I doing? Right from the beginning, the theater was like home to me. It seemed to be what I did best. I never doubted that I belonged in it. Those he work

8、ed with were convinced as well. Milton Lyon, the Artistic Director of the McCarter Theatre who did Finians Rainbow and South Pacific with Reeve, told him when he was about 14 years old: Chris, you better decide what you want, because youre going to get it. At age 15, Reeve got a summer apprenticeshi

9、p at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. By age 16, he had an agent. At Princeton Day School, Reeve participated in various school activities including being President of the Drama Club and Student Director of The Glee Club. Reeve later said about those years, I loved the theater so

10、much. But I began to feel guility. I thought I wasnt giving enough time to school. So I joined as many school clubs and teams as I could. I played on the ice hockey team. I was in the school orchestra. I even sang with a choral group! After graduating from high school, Reeve toured the country as Ce

11、leste Holms leading man in The Irregular Verb to Love, then went on to college at Cornell, although he continued to work simultaneously as a professional actor, thanks to an understanding agent whod set up auditions and meetings around my class schedule. Reeve had a special love for ice hockey, a sp

12、ort that he played from the peewee level through high school where he was Princeton Days number one goalie for all four years. He thought of pursuing the sport as a career until his freshman tryout at Cornell brought a reality check. The varsity team there was the NCAA champion and Ken Dryden was th

13、e goalie. Reeve said, On the first day of practice, I noticed that there were only two Americans and the rest were Canadians. I was in the goal, and the whole team lined up on the blue line, each with a puck, and they were supposed to take turns going from left to right taking a slapshot. They start

14、ed to get out of sequence, and sometimes two or three were coming at me, faster than Id ever seen a puck come at me in my entire lifetime. I got absolutely shelled, and I thought, You know, Im probably going to end up with no teeth, and so I retreated to the safety of the theatre department. That wa

15、s the end of my hockey career. In retrospect, I made the right choice. And I still have all my teeth. As part of his studies at Cornell University, where he majored in Music Theory and English, Reeve spent time studying theater in Britain and France. Of his work in England, where he obtained employm

16、ent as a dogsbody at Londons prestigious Old Vic theater, Reeve said: I was a glorified errand boy, but it was a very exciting time there. I helped by teaching the British actors to speak with an American accent. Then I went to Paris to work with the Comedie Francaise. By the time of his graduation

17、from college, Reeve had already performed in such widely respected theaters as the Boothbay (Maine) Playhouse, the Williamstown Theatre, the San Diego Shakespeare Festival, and the Loeb Drama Center. His roles included Victor in Private Lives, Aeneas in Troilus and Cressida, Beliaev in A Month In Th

18、e Country, and Macheath in Threepenny Opera. In lieu of his final year at Cornell, Reeve was one of two students accepted to advanced standing (Robin Williams was the other) at New Yorks famous Juilliard School of Performing Arts. Here he studied under the renowned John Houseman. When it became fina

19、ncially difficult for his stepfather to continue to pay for Reeves education, he took the role of Ben Harper in the long-running television dramatic serial Love of Life. While Reeve continued his acting lessons and performed in the soap opera, he found time to audition for and win a coveted role in

20、A Matter of Gravity, a new play slated for Broadway starring Katharine Hepburn in 1976. By this time, the demands of his career had become so great that Reeve was forced to give up his final year at Juilliard, but Reeve said of working with Hepburn: In Gravity, I had the privilege of spending nine m

21、onths working with one of the masters of the craft. The two became very close and stayed in touch until Hepburns death in 2003. In 1976, Reeve went to Los Angeles and got a small part in Gray Lady Down, a submarine adventure film. Back in New York City, he was in the off-broadway production My Life.

22、 During that production, Reeve auditioned and successfully screen tested for the 1978 movie Superman. Reeves mother later said: He took the Superman role, quite frankly, as a career move. He felt, even with the risks it entailed, that it would mean he would get a greater recognition and he could byp

23、ass the cattle call. Reeve portrayed Superman as somebody that, you know, you can invite home for dinner. someone you could introduce your parents to. He made Superman believable by playing him as a hero with brains and a heart. Reeve said, What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but th

24、at he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. Reeve told Gene Siskel: The key word for me on him (Superman) is inspiration. He is a leader by inspiration. He sets an example. Its quite important that people realize that I dont see him as a glad-handing show-off, a one-man vigilante

25、force who rights every wrong. For playing Clark Kent, Reeve reasoned that there must be some difference stylistically between Clark and Superman. Otherwise you just have a pair of glasses standing in for a character, and I dont think thats enough for a modern audience. In 1986, Reeve added that Supe

26、rman is nothing more than a popular retelling of the Christ story, or Greek mythology. Its an archetype, watered down and made in vivid colors for twelve-year-olds mentality. Its pop mythology, which extends to the actor, then seeps over to a demand that that actor reflect the needs of the worshiper

27、s. The worship doesnt only go on in the temples - it goes on in the streets, and restaurants, in magazines. But, you know, Im from New Jersey, Im not from Olympus or Krypton, so back off cause I cant take the responsibility. The 18 months of shooting for that movie took place mostly in England, wher

28、e Reeve met and began a relationship with modeling executive Gae Exton. This union produced two children, Matthew Exton born on December 20, 1979 and Alexandra Ali Exton born in 1983. After the huge success of 1978s Superman: The Movie, people invariably referred to Reeve as Superman. Reeve downplay

29、ed the disdain he felt for that comment: As far as Im concerned there is Superman and then theres Christopher Reeve, and Im not interested in having them merge. What Im interested in is acting. Ive been working since I was fourteen; I studied at Juilliard. I wasnt Superman before and I dont plan to

30、be Superman after. He was a very hot young star at that point and was offered the lead in several major films including American Gigolo and Body Heat. Instead Reeve chose for his next project the very different Somewhere in Time. While promoting the movie at the time of its release, Reeve said, Some

31、where In Time, while it errs on the side of pretentiousness, is an absolutely honest attempt to create an old-fashioned romance. Its based on love rather than on sex or X-rated bedroom scenes. I dont know how to talk about a love story without getting all gooey about it, but the script excited me be

32、cause of the situation of the leading character. His problem struck me as that of many people. Theyve got everything going for them, or so they say, except for a real commitment, a real love. In 1980, Reeve spent the summer doing theater in Williamstown. He worked on Superman II and the broadway production of Fifth of July. In 1987 Christopher Reeve and Gae Exton parted unmarried, but keeping joint custody of the two children - not an easy arrangement with the Atlantic Ocean between the two parents. During that summer in Williamstown, Reeve met his soul mate, Dana Mo