Back in the mist of time – actually, the mid 1990’s – Christopher Reeve, after his horrendous accident, created the Christopher Reeve Acting Scholarship (now called Award). The recipient of this annual cash award would be a young, promising disabled actor who needed help in navigating the treacherous waters of Hollywood. In that era there were few to none disabled actors appearing in films or on TV and Christopher knew the lottery-level odds of such an actor establishing an ongoing career. But he also knew there were those willing to challenge those odds to fulfill a dream.
Cut to 2023. The Christopher Reeve Acting Award has been part of the annual Media Access Awards, a celebration of disability representation in media, for 25 plus years, thanks to the ongoing support of the foundation. But, boy, how things have changed. Especially over the last few years, opportunities for disabled performers and the number of disability story-lines have grown exponentially. Back in the 90’s, there were maybe four of five self-identified disabled writers in Hollywood. Now, in the Writers Guild of America West, the essential union for screen writers, there are now more than sixty.
Disabled performers are now making headlines. In 2019, Broadway wheelchair actor Ali Stroker won a Tony Award for the musical, “Oklahoma.” The 2021 movie, “CODA,” was a watershed event in the history of American cinema, a film about a Deaf family, mostly conveyed in sign language, that won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Deaf actor Troy Kotsur. Skeptics could no longer say that disability-centered films make audiences “sad” and they won’t watch.
As they say in baseball, the disabled are now building a farm team. Young disabled actors, many of them supported by the Reeve Award, are getting small parts and building impressive resumes, like all actors do. The statistics of disabled performers in leading roles are still slight, but as the pool of talent grows, more stars like Marlee Matlin or Peter Dinklage will emerge.