Actress Margot Kidder’s death ruled a suicide
Her daughter called the ruling ‘a big relief ’ now the truth is in the open
HELENA, Mont. — “Superman” actress Margot Kidder’s death has been ruled a suicide and her daughter said Wednesday it’s a relief to finally have the truth out.
Kidder, who played Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve’s Superman in her most famous role, was found in her Montana home on May 13.
At the time, Kidder’s manager, Camilla Fluxman Pines, said Kidder died peacefully in her sleep.
A statement released Wednesday by Park County coroner Richard Wood said the 69-year-old Kidder “died as a result of a self-inflicted drug and alcohol overdose.”
Maggie McGuane, Kidder’s daughter by her ex-husband Thomas McGuane, told The Associated Press that she knew her mother died by suicide the moment authorities took her to Kidder’s home in Livingston, a small town near Yellowstone National Park.
“It’s a big relief that the truth is out there,” she said. “It’s important to be open and honest, so there’s not a cloud of shame in dealing with this.”
Kidder’s death is one of several high-profile suicides this year that include celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain and fashion designer Kate Spade.
“It’s a very unique sort of grief and pain,” McGuane said.
Kidder struggled with mental illness much of her life, made worse by a 1990 car accident that left her in debt and put her in a wheelchair for almost two years.
Kidder and Reeve starred in four Superman movies between 1978 and 1987. She also appeared in “The Great Waldo Pepper” with Robert Redford in 1975, Brian De Palma’s “Sisters” in 1973 and “The Amityville Horror” in 1979.
She later appeared in small films and television shows, including “R.L. Stine’s the Haunting Hour,” for which she received a Daytime Emmy Award. Kidder, a native of Yellowknife, Canada, was a political activist who was arrested in 2011 in a Washington, D.C., protest over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Canada’s oil sands.
Her final years were troubled by conflicts with people down on their luck that she took into her home. Between August 2016 and her death in May, authorities were called to her house 40 times on reports of people trespassing, theft and other disturbances.
The calls include responses by ambulances five times in seven months, including at the time of her death.