Is There Really a ‘Superman Curse’?

The tragedy that befell Superman star Christopher Reeve in 1995, coupled with the premature death of TV’s “Superman” George Reeves in the 1950s, gave rise to murmurs about what became known as “the Superman Curse.” Yet watching HBO’s new documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story highlights another shared misfortune by these Men of Steel: The unfair perils of typecasting.

Featuring extensive interviews with Reeve’s children, friends and fellow actors, Super/Man doesn’t really dwell on that aspect, but rather his courage and activism in the wake of his devastating spinal-cord injury, and the grace displayed during the decade until his death in 2004 at the age of 52.

Drill down a bit, though (which itself evokes an image from his first Superman film), and Reeve and Reeves both faced the disappointment of being associated with a role from which the public couldn’t separate them, leading to professional frustration and, in the latter’s case, alcohol abuse and an apparent suicide.

“Apparent” because there’s been a lingering element of mystery, at least among true-crime devotees, surrounding Reeves, as documented (with considerable creative license) in the movie Hollywoodland. Beyond serving as a showcase for an appropriately beefy-looking Ben Affleck to flex his acting muscles as another DC hero, the film zeroed in on Reeves’ inability to find meaningful work apart from the kid-friendly character he played from 1952-58 in the then-nascent medium of television, before dying at 45.

As Wired magazine observed in 2009, marking the 50th anniversary of Reeves’ death, “As the ’50s came to a close, he was culturally popular on the outside and artistically miserable on the inside,” a victim of “bad luck and disastrous relationships.”

Reeve didn’t suffer from such personal strife, but he did find the skies over Hollywood to be unfriendly to his loftier ambitions after Superman and Superman II launched him, forcing him back for a lightly regarded second sequel, and a third sequel that he himself described—almost charitably for anyone who remembers its slow-motion moon fight—as “a catastrophe from start to finish.”

Perhaps inevitably, Reeve sought to proclaim his independence by taking an unexpected role in the twisty 1982 thriller Deathtrap, which included a surprise moment (to those unfamiliar with the play upon which it was based, anyway) when he kissed co-star Michael Caine.

The prevailing view saw the decision as almost an act of defiance, an effort by a still-young actor to prove there was more to him and shed that bright red cape. Whatever the intent, portraying a gay character proved simply too much for the audience amid the overt homophobia tolerated during those years, as Reeve conceded to a British interviewer in 1985, calling that scene “the $10 million kiss,” a reference to its impact on the film’s box-office tally.

“I’d just done Superman II, and they just weren’t ready for the idea of Superman kissing another man,” Reeve said. “They just couldn’t take it. The image was a problem at that time.”

In Super/Man, Jeff Daniels, who played Reeve’s lover in a stage play, recalled a similar reaction from theater patrons, lamenting that his friend couldn’t escape the shackles of the screen role that propelled him to stardom.

“He wanted to prove to everyone that he was a good actor,” Daniels says. “And I don’t think he had the chance to find out. You’re Superman.”

Indeed, while the last chapter of Reeve’s career is understandably lost in Super/Man’s focus on his accident, his son, Matthew Reeve, recalls his father “doing TV movies of the week to pay the bills,” the byproduct of his generally forgettable film résumé (Monsignor, anyone?) post-Superman.

Of course, the history of acting is full of stories about performers who just want a job, land that big break, enjoy enormous success and then gripe about missed and sacrificed opportunities because of it. In the documentary, Reeve jokes about the lure of Hollywood in a clip from The Tonight Show, quoting the legendary acting coach John Houseman telling him to be a serious actor—unless, of course, someone throws a great deal of money your way.

Even so, there’s no denying the fame and fortune associated with being Superman, as Reeve and Reeves discovered, came with major strings attached. Whether those bonds were chains or merely velvet strands, in terms of their effect on the aspirations of these mere mortals, they became their own kind of Kryptonite.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story premieres Dec. 7 on HBO.

Brian Lowry is a former columnist and critic for CNN and Variety, and a contributor to the Daily Beast.