In this article: Birthdays Last week's Who's News Bonus links: Democratic convention celebs

Actor Christopher Reeve, 47, is a founder, board member and former president of The Creative Coalition, a non-partisan entertainment industry group aiming to make politicians aware of issues of importance to it. Since his 1995 horse-riding accident left him paralyzed, Reeve has become all the more active politically. In 1996 he attended his first convention at the invitation of the Democrats who asked him to give a speech. We asked:

What's the most important issue to you personally?
To increase funding for the National Institutes of Health, so that experiments that researchers are ready to perform that will lead to cures for various diseases will receive adequate funding. Many proposals are simply waiting for sufficient government funding to go ahead.

And what do you think is the most important issue facing society?
The most important issue facing global society is overpopulation. Any problem that you can think of -- from world hunger to the environment to education to poverty -- stems from overpopulation. My fondest hope for the 21st century is that we overcome all the social, political and religious barriers to the problem of overpopulation.

What do you think makes a good president?
It must be someone who has a vision about the future and is able to communicate that effectively. One of the greatest examples was FDR, who literally couldn't lift himself out of a wheelchair, but he was able to lift this country out of despair.

Are personal traits important in a candidate?
In private, presidents and kings have always been human beings who are fallible and who sometimes become somewhat intoxicated with the luxuries of their office. It's just that in the late 20th century, we as a culture became absolutely fascinated by the personal behavior of anyone in the public eye. The media began to gain access to the private lives of public figures in a way that had never occurred before.

What or who turned you on to politics?
Since my earliest years of recollection, at 7, 8, 9, I became interested in politics because of my father Franklin Reeve, who has always been extremely politically active. Even though he came from a wealthy family, after graduation from Princeton and getting a Ph.D. at Columbia, he joined the labor movement and became a communist and traveled frequently to Russia. He's somebody who has always seen things, in political terms, very far to the left. But growing up, I remember there were always very impassioned political discussions at the table, and friends of his included Senator Patrick Moynihan and various intellectuals from all over the country and from abroad.

Are you Republican or Democrat?
I lean much more toward being a Democrat, although I find that on a day-to-day basis, depending on the issue, I simply turn to the representative who can be the most helpful. For example, on some insurance issues and some disabilities issues, since my injury, I've been working with Republicans such as Congressman Porter and Senator Specter from Pennsylvania, who is on the Appropriations Committee. In those terms, I'm issue driven rather than controlled by party affiliation.

For whom will you vote?
I'll vote for the vice president. I really support him on the key issues: the environment, health care, campaign-finance reform, education, gun control. Those are the major ones. I agree with his position on all of those.

-- By Evelyn Poitevent