Margot Kidder: Christopher Reeve's Lois Lane, from 1978 to 1987

From Yellowknife to Hollywood

Margaret Ruth Kidder was born on October 17, 1948 in Yellowknife, in Canada's Northwest Territories, to an American mining engineer father and a Canadian mother. Her childhood was spent from mining camp to mining camp, in isolated towns of the Far North, before a boarding school in Toronto.

She started on Canadian television in the late 1960s, then left for Hollywood. Her first notable films were genre films: Sisters (1972) by Brian De Palma, where she plays separated conjoined twins, and Black Christmas (1974), one of the first slashers in history.

In 1975, she starred opposite Robert Redford in The Great Waldo Pepper. She was then a recognized actress of independent cinema, with a husky voice and a legendary outspokenness, but not yet a star.

When the producers of Superman were looking for their Lois, she was twenty-eight, with a marriage to writer Thomas McGuane behind her, a daughter, Maggie, born in 1976, and no desire to play ingenues.

The Superman casting in 1977

The casting of Superman is one of the longest in film history. Producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind and director Richard Donner auditioned dozens of actresses for Lois Lane, including several established names. Margot Kidder did her screen tests in 1977, opposite a freshly chosen Christopher Reeve.

What convinced Donner was the test of the balcony scene: the interview with Superman on Lois's terrace. Kidder is nervous, funny, awkward, and above all credible as a journalist who can't believe what she's seeing. The director said the scene played out exactly as in the film.

The contract was signed for two films shot back to back, Superman and Superman II, in England, at Pinewood Studios, with sequences in New York and Canada. Filming lasted nearly two years.

For the actress, it was a leap into the unknown: a budget of more than fifty million dollars, Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman on the bill, and an unknown co-star whom she would, in her own way, protect.

Her Lois Lane: the journalist who doesn't apologize

Our article on Lois Lane retraces every version of the character. Margot Kidder's is the first to truly exist on the big screen, and it sets a template: a reporter who smokes, who can't spell, who interrupts everyone and treats Clark Kent like a piece of furniture.

Her Lois isn't a damsel in distress, even when she is one. She falls from a helicopter, ends up buried in a car, but she's the one who drives every scene. The film plays on her gift of gab: "You've got me? Who's got you?" she throws at Superman, who has just caught her in midair.

The scene of the flight over Metropolis, set to the poem Can You Read My Mind, has become the most famous love scene in superhero cinema. Kidder is filmed in close-up for several minutes, without a word of dialogue to Superman: everything comes through her eyes.

This mix of cynicism and wonder, she brought herself. Donner wanted a modern Lois; Kidder gave him a Lois who never apologizes for being what she is.

Four films from 1978 to 1987

Margot Kidder played Lois in all four films of the Reeve era:

• Superman (1978) : the meeting, the flight, Lois's death in the earthquake and Superman turning back time to save her. The role earned her the Saturn Award for Best Actress.
• Superman II (1980) : Lois discovers Clark's secret, spends a night with him in the Fortress, then loses that memory through a kiss. Our analysis of Superman II looks back at this film, often judged the best of the saga.
• Superman III (1983) : an appearance of a few minutes at the opening and end of the film, for the reasons explained below.
• Superman IV (1987) : Lois gets a full role back, with a new flight and a scene where Clark reveals his identity to her again before erasing it a second time.

Nine years separate the first and last films. No actress has carried Lois on the big screen over such a long period, tied with Amy Adams for the number of films.

In the meantime, she shot The Amityville Horror (1979), a major horror hit, which confirmed she was no prisoner of the cape.

The falling-out with the Salkinds and Superman III

The 1983 film shows her leaving on vacation to Bermuda in the first minutes, and only coming back at the end. Lana Lang, played by Annette O'Toole, takes the place of the love interest. Our analysis of Superman III details this odd film out, where Lois's absence is only one of the problems.

The actress never wavered in her version of events: she was punished for defending Donner. Ilya Salkind disputed that reading, citing a script choice. The public, for its part, mostly noted that the film without Lois was the weakest.

When the production moved to Cannon Films for Superman IV, she got a full role back. Christopher Reeve had demanded her return as one of his conditions for taking up the cape again.

The duo with Christopher Reeve

The couple formed by Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve remains the benchmark for every adaptation. They were four years apart, she the elder, with an on-set rapport that both described in detail: she pushed him around, he found her unpredictable and, he said, indispensable.

Their chemistry comes down to a contrast. Reeve plays gravity and gentleness; Kidder plays chaos and irony. When they're together, each reveals the other: Clark becomes touching because Lois pushes him around, Lois becomes vulnerable because Superman sees her.

After Reeve's riding accident in 1995, which left him quadriplegic, Margot Kidder remained one of his closest friends. She took part in his foundation's fundraisers and paid public tribute to him at his death in 2004.

In 2004, she also made an appearance in Smallville, in the role of Bridgette Crosby, the emissary of Dr. Swann, played by Reeve himself. The two actors don't share a scene, but the series brings them together one last time in the same universe.

The hardships: the accident, the illness, the activism

Margot Kidder's life after Superman was difficult, and she spoke about it with rare candor. In 1990, an accident on the set of a series left her partially paralyzed for nearly two years, unable to work, and led her into bankruptcy.

She also lived with bipolar disorder, diagnosed in 1988. In 1996, a highly publicized episode saw her disappear for several days in Los Angeles before being found in a backyard in Glendale. Rather than hide, she chose to talk about it and became, in the 2000s, a respected voice on mental health.

Settled in Livingston, Montana, she obtained American citizenship in 2005 and got involved in politics, against the Iraq war and then for the environment. She continued to act, mostly on television, and in 2015 won an Emmy Award for her role in the children's series R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour.

She died in Livingston on May 13, 2018, at sixty-nine. The authorities concluded it was a suicide by overdose of medication and alcohol. Her daughter Maggie wanted that conclusion made public, so that her mother's illness would not be kept quiet.

What she leaves to the character

Margot Kidder defined Lois Lane for the movies. Before her, the character existed in the comics, the serials and the George Reeves series; after her, she has a face, a voice and a rhythm. Every actress who followed, from Teri Hatcher to Rachel Brosnahan, has had to position herself in relation to her.

She also established an idea that wasn't obvious in 1978: Lois is a comic character. Her clumsiness, her spelling mistakes, her too-quick lines have become traits of the character, taken up as far as James Gunn's film, whose Lois is funny first and foremost.

Finally, she leaves an example of off-screen courage. By talking about her illness at a time when few actors did, she rendered a service her films couldn't have. Our overview of women of the Superman universe recalls the place Lois, and therefore hers, holds in that gallery.

To place her films among all the others, our complete list of Superman films puts the Reeve era back in the timeline.

Conclusion

Margot Kidder invented the Lois Lane of the movies: funny, quick, imperfect, never submissive. Four films with Christopher Reeve, a flight scene that became legendary, a falling-out with the producers that says everything about her character, and a life after the cape marked by hardships and by the courage to name them.

The spin-off produced by the same Salkinds, without Reeve or her, is told in our article on Supergirl (1984).

For the Loises who succeeded her on the big screen, see our profiles of Kate Bosworth andAmy Adams ; on television, that ofErica Durance.

Nearly fifty years after the 1978 film, her Lois remains the gold standard. You can prefer Erica Durance or Amy Adams; you can't understand them without her.

To go further, our profile of Christopher Reeve tells the story of the other half of the duo, and our article on Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor completes the 1978 trio.