Jane Seymour Remembers ‘Fearless’ Christopher Reeve amid Documentary Release: ‘Amazing Guy’ (Exclusive)

Jane Seymour pays tribute to her late friend Christopher Reeve.

Speaking exclusively to PEOPLE at Thursday’s annual Oscar Wilde Awards, hosted by the American-Irish Alliance, the actress was asked about the documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Storywhich had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival on January 21.

“He was just an amazing guy. He was really bright, fearless, and he liked to be by himself. He liked to fly planes and sail boats and ride horses,” Seymour, 73, told PEOPLE of Reeve, who she was close friends with before his death in at the age of 52 in 2004. The actors also starred together in the 1980 film. Somewhere in time.

At Thursday’s event, which took place at Bad Robot’s offices in Los Angeles, Seymour also talked about the things she’s “excited about going public” by meeting Reeve in the documentary.

“After his terrible accident, the really hard part for him, besides not being able to move and breathe on his own, was that he could never be on his own again,” she told PEOPLE of the effects of the spinal injury Reeve suffered in May 1995. a riding accident that left him paralyzed and dependent on a ventilator. Unfortunately, nine years later he died of a heart attack.

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Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve shoot Somewhere in time in Mackinac Island, Michigan (May 1979).

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“It took two people 24 hours a day just to keep him alive. And I don’t think he really wanted that [his wife Dana Reeve] that I have to be a caregiver,” Seymour added.

The former Bond girl said she thought her friend “was amazing” in that “when he processed what happened to him and Dana told him, ‘You’re still you,’ he decided, ‘What can I do to help others people in this situation?’ “, referring to Reeve’s 1998 memoir However, I.

“Because there’s a lot of people, he told me, left there in rehab with missing families and missing wives, missing husbands, missing insurance companies, and they’re just sitting there and they want life to go on,” Seymour continued.

As she told PEOPLE, “He put all his energy and all his intellect and all his visibility into really moving the dial and getting the stem cell thing going when nobody wanted to do it. Now it’s normal.”

From L: Glenn Close, Jane Seymour, Christopher Reeve, Reeve’s wife Dana and their son William on April 15, 1997.

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“He refused to believe that it was impossible for people with spinal injuries to recover, and nobody was spending a lot of money on spinal injuries,” Seymour said. “They just gave up on them, and he just said, ‘No, no. Go do something about it.’ ”

“And they also did a lot to help that community,” the actress continued, adding that helping others gave Reeve “a purpose.”

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story includes intimate interviews with Reeve’s three children Matthew, Alexandra and Will, as well as his late wife Dana, who died in 2006 of lung cancer.

All of their children serve on the board of directors of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which is dedicated to researching a cure for spinal cord injuries.

Superman also features memories of Reeve’s friends including Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Daniels and Glenn Close.

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