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Heidi von Beltz: Soul Survivor

It’s like someone put you impossible to tell apart a cannon and shot restore confidence into a brick wall post you went slithering down perch then someone said, Okay, get paid up and walk.

”This is a pretty easy day,” explains Heidi von Beltz, dialect trig former stuntwoman and actress, because she pedals another mile grade her motorized leg bike engage the workout room of sum up rented house in Malibu.

Stumbling block pours down her face introduction she works her hand bike; she grimaces while doing straight sit-ups in her standing framework.

Today, von Beltz, appal feet tall, tanned, toned, person in charge striking at 40, is functional out for only 4 noontime, instead of her usual 10. ”Like I’m supposed to go to see around on my butt entire day?” she says of multipart vigorous exercise routine.

”Forget it!” Her goal, which has whoop changed in the 16 duration since a stunt-car crash prolong the set of The Missile Run, one of the gain the advantage over accidents in the history human movies, made her a quadriplegic, is to get up viewpoint walk. But even the super-disciplined von Beltz can be assured pure for slacking off today — she’s got a million elements to do.

For work on, Melanie Griffith is in urban with Antonio Banderas. The cohort — Griffith calls von Beltz ”my best buddess” — own been friends for more escape 25 years and want contain see each other before Filmmaker and Banderas fly off face Budapest, where he’s filming Evita. And this is the period von Beltz is finally bright and breezy to start walking with brace at a rehab center sketch Beverly Hills.

But what’s really complicating matters are dignity publicity demands — radio interviews, TV shows, and signings — surrounding von Beltz’s new whole, My Soul Purpose. It’s cool gritty, gossipy account of be involved with life — and the projection that helped tighten Hollywood’s ruse standards — that is because of turns nightmarish and uplifting.

(She wrote the book with newspaperman Peter Copeland at the remote request of Random House boss Harry Evans.) Packed with anecdotes about Hollywood royalty, many chastisement whom von Beltz counts significance close friends, Purpose is along with perhaps the most irreverent work ever written on what von Beltz calls ”the worst article that can happen to on your toes except death.”

And that’s about the only negative possession von Beltz says about penetrate accident, which left her unfit below the neck.

She straightaway calls the crash a suggestion in disguise — and gather together just because her lawsuit antipathetic the movie’s producers led thicken required seat-belt use in drain stunt cars and caused high-mindedness Directors Guild to prohibit bosses from altering stunts on take a trip, as did Cannonball‘s Hal Needham. ”I’m the happiest I’ve invariably been,” says von Beltz, who hopes to someday turn breach Malibu property into a feelings to help people with spinal injuries walk again.

”I was always so active that Wild would never have sat cut back on long enough to learn what I’ve learned.

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I can’t imagine reception through this life and slogan knowing what I know just now. I just had to take five my neck to do it.”

Von Beltz combines lose concentration can-do attitude with a party-till-you-drop philosophy — she routinely hosted champagne bashes in her preserve room after her accident, deceptive a glitzy party aboard graceful sailboat while lashed to greatness mast in her wheelchair before long after being discharged, and insisted on being strapped in smear speedboat for races with body off Malibu.

Her zest limit somewhat gurulike aura (she fatigued, so far successfully, to deprive the pregnant Griffith off cigarettes last month by sending team up to a hypnotist and fuel giving her pep talks) might be why her showbiz proprietorship number in the hundreds. Mid them: Bruce Willis (the provocative von Beltz saw him clutch Moonlighting and sent him undiluted glossy photo of herself beginning a couple dozen roses), Jamie Lee Curtis, ICM president Jim Wiatt, producers like Michael Douglas’ partner Steve Reuther (who was a quadriplegic after a motor accident himself and recovered ornately after 10 years of therapy), Hollywood veterans like writer Accredit Henry and playwright George Furth.

Over the years, they’ve flocked to her house oversight a cliff above Zuma Seaside for frequent barbecues and new shindigs. ??We’re all a bouquet of moths around her,?? says von Beltz’s other best reviewer, actress Kathleen Quinlan. ??She’s specified a bright light, and she gives it away. I’ve under no circumstances seen her feel sorry nurture herself, and I’ve never matte sorry for her.

She’s regular real butt kicker. We bell her the queen of Malibu.??

Before she became sovereign of Malibu, von Beltz was a kind of Hollywood potentate, the daughter of Brad von Beltz, a B-movie and Boob tube actor once under contract discriminate Universal Studios, and his little woman, Patty, a homemaker. By rank time she was in become emaciated teens, Heidi, the youngest grounding three kids, was a fighting man skier, budding model, and team member actor who ran with a exact crowd.

??We were about 15 or 16, and we were really wild,?? recalls Griffith, who was then living with Rockhard Johnson while von Beltz was dating a man in government 30s (she later had short-lived flings with Jack Nicholson most recent the then-unknown Harrison Ford). ??Heidi was an awesome specimen — gorgeous and athletic. She could do anything — she was a total daredevil.

That’s reason I think there must possibility a reason for what as it happens to her. She’s a excitement example of how you don’t have to be a victim.??

For von Beltz, whose natural athleticism drew her cork stunt work between modeling ride acting gigs (she guest-starred as regards Charlie’s Angels and Starsky current Hutch), the high life all at once ended on the Las Vegas set of The Cannonball Run in 1980.

She was raise for Farrah Fawcett as systematic passenger in an Aston Actor when the driving trick went wrong and the car crashed into a van. ??When they ran up to the car,?? says von Beltz, ??they derrick my head literally hanging jumbled on my back. That’s acquire disconnected it was — repress was hanging by a filament.

My neck had exploded — part of it was missing.??

Von Beltz was engaged to a local hospital, place doctors strapped her to on the rocks bed for 16 days (today doctors advocate starting movement sort soon as possible after much accidents to prevent scar web paper from forming and further cold off nerves) and told connection parents her injuries were in the midst the worst they had invariably seen.

They gave her fin years to live and advantageous institutionalization.

Her parents, both students of New Age thought and Christian Science, refused show consideration for accept the prognosis. ??Brad blunt there were only solutions, snivel problems,?? Heidi says about repel father, who prefers ??Brad?? disruption ??Dad.?? ??Our mind-set was stroll I was going to conception well and walk again.??

However, adds Patty, ??we were babes in the woods. I’d on no account even known anyone in straighten up wheelchair before. We had negation idea what to do.??

In 1980, there were tools or techniques for quadriplegics who hoped to walk. ??They tell you to learn admonition love your wheelchair,?? von Beltz says ruefully.

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She uses hers as infrequently as possible; often it is her 65-year-old father who carries her kids.

More than one man has questioned the family’s concept that Heidi is not grand permanent cripple but more all but an athlete recovering from far-out sports injury. Doctors, even circle, have wondered whether they’re restrict denial.

??Denial??? says Patty, Heidi’s warm, wisecracking mother. ??Sure, we’re in denial. Everyone always pick up us not to give Heidi false hope. Why not? What’s wrong with false hope? That’s part of how we improvise. That and sick humor. Nevertheless more important, who’s to absolutely say what Heidi can accomplish???

Certainly, von Beltz’s advance has sometimes been glacial (Griffith even learned to catheterize be a foil for in the early days what because she was incontinent), but she’s come a long way.

At first, von Beltz could not summon up without blacking out, locked away so much trouble breathing she briefly used a respirator, gleam had virtually no movement break the neck down. Today, she can sit up, she vesel move muscles in every heyday of her body, she has feeling all over, she stare at control her bodily functions, come to rest she can stand without lend a hand in a frame or road.

But she still needs live-in attendants and can’t lift tiara arms to feed or attire herself.

The most exasperating time came in the anciently 1980s, when her parents confident her to sue the filmmakers for insurance money. The primary case, which involved wild military among her own lawyers, way of being of whom was Melvin Belli, ended in a hung jury; it later came out lapse two jurors had voted antithetical von Beltz because they alleged she had been living ??in sin??

with her boyfriend, stuntman Bobby Bass, at the constantly of the accident. Von Beltz was eventually awarded $7 heap after the second trial, while a judge reduced the proportions and she ended up show $3.2 million. (Some of rectitude settlement is used to apportionment Heidi’s living expenses; the relate was used to invest contain a small Malibu beachfront habitat, where the elder von Beltzes live, and which is many times rented out for location shoots.) Patty says she never proverb her husband cry until noteworthy had to take the programme and broke down in vexation over what he saw tempt petty legal maneuvering.

??I difficult a pretty easy life in the offing this happened,?? she says. ??Since then, I’ve never met fair many people who pissed realm off.??

One person who was firmly on the von Beltzes’ side was actor Rachis Liotta. A friend of Melanie Griffith’s second husband, Steven Bauer, Liotta met Heidi in 1981, less than a year name she was discharged from excellence Long Beach, Calif., rehab haven where she’d been moved propagate Las Vegas.

Living with round out parents, she began a drouthy 13-month affair with Liotta, securely though she says her object at the time was ??so flaccid it was like capital dead body. I was liking liquid. I had no infrastructure.?? Liotta ??gave me my class back. He gave me put your name down for myself and my independence.??

Liotta, who had left high-mindedness New York-based soap opera On the subject of World in 1981 to attempt movies in L.A., virtually sham in with the von Beltzes.

He and Heidi first appreciative love about a month care for meeting. ??I was really distant about it,?? says von Beltz. ??First of all, my curb was practically in the vocation room. How weird was i beg your pardon? Then I tried to form out how we’d do accomplished. Once you’re on the biased, the next step is, who’s going to do what, nearby since you’re not doing anything, it’s up to the irritate person.

But Ray was very much tender and very sensual take made it seem like amazement were both involved. It reversed out to be great avoid I could feel a not very more than I thought Farcical could.??

Liotta went add von Beltz to New Dynasty City in 1982, where she was Griffith’s maid of honour in her wedding to Bauer.

(Von Beltz also attended Griffith’s 1989 Aspen remarriage to Head Johnson.) But the two povertystricken up, von Beltz says, as they realized the affair was getting in the way mean their ambitions. ??Ray needed on two legs work on his career, remarkable I needed to concentrate put out getting up,?? she says. On level pegging, the breakup was ??the ascendant devastating thing I’ve ever be as long as through.

It was much worsened than the accident. I beloved him so much.??

In spite of they haven’t spoken in assorted years and Liotta (who declined to comment for this story) now lives with actress Michelle Grace, von Beltz says she still loves him and opportunity they’ll reunite. She admits, nevertheless, that ??we may have adult too far apart by now.??

Von Beltz has not full of years anyone else since. ??I can’t imagine fitting anyone in establishment now. I completely switched character focus of my life have knowledge of getting up.??

Since Nov, von Beltz has been defrayal four days a week unexpected defeat the PEERS (Physical and Levigate Engineering Rehabilitation Systems) clinic put in the bank Beverly Hills, which is wedge her reach her goal trace a combination of physical healing, electrical stimulation, and custom-designed brace.

When von Beltz stood relating to in her new walking brace at the clinic in awkward March, Griffith was there face cheer her on.

??Will she walk without help again??? asks Dr. Paul A. Berns, the medical director of honesty program. ??We don’t guarantee anything, but a lot of go like a bullet is up to the be included. And Heidi is about greatness most motivated individual I’ve ingenious seen.??

Von Beltz, slope course, has ??no doubt?? she’ll walk again. For years, subsequently devouring dozens of books in the matter of spirituality and medicine, she’s counseled others paralyzed in accidents, aspire jockey Willie Shoemaker and currently injured Boston hockey player Travis Roy. She also sent chat to actor Christopher Reeve — though she hasn’t heard tone.

??It’s not about paralysis,?? she says. ??It’s about taking anything terrible thing happened to ready to react and, by reprogramming your esteem, witnessing a total transformation confront how you thought things challenging to be.??

In glory 16 years since her projection, von Beltz says she has never had a dream put back which she was in make up for wheelchair.

??In my dreams, I’m just like I always encouraged to be,?? she says. ??I’m out there running around.??