Jane Seymour is talking out about how her old friend Christopher Reeve influenced her in his final decade.
On Saturday, February 8, the 73-year-old actress presented Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story with the best documentary award at the 2025 AARP Movies for Grownups Awards. Earlier in the evening, Seymour told PEOPLE that she used to assist in care for Reeve, with whom she co-starred in 1980’s Somewhere in Time, when wife Dana Morosini needed a vacation following the Superman actor’s paralysis in a 1995 riding accident.
“We were and stayed quite close, even after his injury. Seymour recalled that Dana and I would sometimes engage in a game of tag: when she couldn’t be present, she would inquire if I had come to interfere. Chris has consistently maintained his sense of humor. Ever. I mean, he was amusing. He was so much fun. And I think no one in the world has inspired me more than he has because he accepted an impossible task to live that way.”
Seymour observed, as she has before, how difficult it must have been for Reeve, who enjoyed isolation, to require round-the-clock care. “We’d have long conversations about that,” she told me. “He responded, ‘Now, whether I like it or not, I wake up in the morning.’ He said, ‘Every morning when I wake up, I’ve just awoken from a dream in which I’m sailing alone. I’m flying alone. And then I wake up and hear machinery, and there’s someone there who has to look after every part of my body.”
The Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman actor remembers Reeve expressing that he had to understand that those caring for him “bring the outside world with them.”
“I remember listening to him and thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, how hard must that be?'” Seymour stated.
According to Seymour, Reeves’ legacy, which includes the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, “teaches all of us that everyone in life will have challenges, some more than others.”
“The hardest thing to do is accept,” she added. “And if you can accept, open your heart, and reach out to help others, you will have a purpose. And it is the key to happiness. And if you have a purpose, you may feel really good about yourself. When you feel good about yourself, you act like a magnet. People want to be part of something positive. They don’t want to be around folks who say, ‘Oh, life’s so bad. ‘Why me?’ And they are drawn to those who are going out and making a difference. And that was his allure. That’s what made him a true Superman.