There is a scene burned into the memory of an entire generation: a darkened theater in December 1978, a trumpet fanfare rising in the darkness, and a man in a red and blue costume stepping into the frame and looking up. And an audience, composed of grown adults who knew perfectly well what they were watching, leaning forward and choosing to believe.

They believed Christopher Reeve.

Not in the way you believe a clever special effect or appreciate a skilled performance. They believed him the way you believe something true, the way you respond to a person who means exactly what they are saying and is not asking your permission to mean it. He was twenty-six years old, virtually unknown, a product of Juilliard and the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and he had just become the most famous actor in the world.

This is the story of what he did with that fame. And what he did after the world took everything away.

A Super Man tells the full story of one of the most remarkable lives of the twentieth century, from the divided Princeton household that shaped the boy to the Juilliard training that forged the actor, from the extraordinary casting process that made him Superman to the serious dramatic work that proved he was always much more than that, from the accident that broke his body to the decade of achievement that demonstrated, beyond any argument, that the body was never where the essential thing lived.

Playing a superhero was the easiest thing Christopher Reeve ever did.

Becoming one was the work of a lifetime.