Superman's wife: 'I'm beating lung cancer'

Danan Reeve, the wife of the later Superman star Christopher Reeve, is responding well to treatment for lung cancer.

She told an audience at a fundraising gala that her tumor is "shrinking and shrinking and shrinking".

Reeve, 44, won worldwide admiration for the support of her Hollywood star husband, who was paralysed in a horse-riding accident in 1996 and died last October at the age of 52. Then in August she announced that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

"I'm beating the odds and defying every statistic the doctors can throw at me," she said at a gala for The Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation. "My prognosis looks better all the time." She was wearing a necklace with the Superman symbol on it bearing the words "Go Forward".

At the gala, the Christopher Reeve Spirit of Courage Award was awarded to husband and wife Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

"It's bitter-sweet," Douglas said in accepting the award. "We miss him so much."

Also at the gala were Meryl Streep.

Glenn Close. Robin Williams and Paul Newman. Newman, who had initially pledged $50,000 (£30,000) upped his contribution. "What the hell, make it $100,000," he said.

Dana Reeve succeeded her husband as chair of the foundation, which he founded and hoped the gala evening would raise £1.2 million.

Asked how she kept her spirits up, she said: "I was married to a man who never gave up."