Christopher Reeve

Was roommates with Robin Williams at Juilliard. They remained close friends for the remainder of his life. Williams helped pay his medical bills during his final years and dedicated his Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award to Reeve.
At the time of his death, he had regained partial movement in his fingers and toes, and said he could feel a pin prick anywhere on his body as well as differentiate hot and cold temperatures.
While Reeve was filming Somewhere in Time (1980), the local theater decided to show his breakout hit Superman (1978). Many Somewhere in Time cast members joined locals for the event. Early into the screening, the sound went out. Reeve, who was seated next to co-star Jane Seymour, stood up in the audience and delivered all the lines.
The last character he played before his riding accident was a paralyzed individual in Above Suspicion (1995), which was released six days before the accident.
Said that after he was paralyzed, it was his wife's support that kept him from choosing death over living on a respirator.

Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out in the ocean.
What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely. From an acting point of view, that's how I approached the part.
A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
[on Robin Williams' visiting him in the hospital shortly after the accident] There was this guy wearing a blue scrub hat and a yellow gown and with a Russian accent, being some insane Russian doctor... I laughed for the first time, and I knew that life was going to be okay.
I have seen first-hand how Superman actually transforms people's lives. I have seen children dying of brain tumors who wanted as their last request to be able to talk to me, and have gone to their graves with a peace brought on by knowing that their belief in this kind of character is intact. I have seen that Superman really matters. They're connecting with something very basic: the ability to overcome obstacles, the ability to persevere, the ability to understand difficulty and to turn your back on it.