margot kidder

She was Lois Lane for a generation. SFX remembers the late Superman star

“Somehow Margot Kidder had the magic,” remembered Lynn Stalmaster, casting director on Superman (1978). It was a magic that made her nervy, spirited performance as Lois Lane so utterly electric on screen, a mix of ’40s screwball sass and ’70s independence.

Kidder was born in Yellowknife in Canada. She was filmstruck from a young age. “I used to get the bush pilots to smuggle me movie magazines and I’d read them and hide them under my mattress, because my mother didn’t approve,” she recalled. “So I had this dream of going to Hollywood and I never lost it.”

She played twins in ’73 thriller Sisters, a student in ’74 slasher flick Black Christmas. 1975’s The Great Waldo Pepper cast her opposite Robert Redford, establishing her as a characterful, magnetic female lead. The Amityville Horror (1979) gave her a horror hit.

The role of Lois nearly went to Stockard Channing, best known as Rizzo in Grease. But Kidder’s innate goofiness gave her the edge. “Her charm shined through and made her very loveable, very adorable and audiences really responded,” shared Christopher Reeve of his co-star.

The love story between Lois and Superman powered 1980’s sequel – this was the woman he had turned back time for, after all – but Kidder was sidelined from Superman III (1983) and the loathed Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.

The ’90s found her battling bipolar disorder – she later became a mental health advocate as well as a political activist – but she continued acting, returning to the Superverse in Smallville and winning a Daytime Emmy Award in 2015 for her performance in RL Stine’s The Haunting Hour.

“I had one of the most blessed lives that anybody could ask for, with a few rather public bumps here and there,” she once said. “But, you know, c’est la vie. Everything turned out just the way it was supposed to somehow.” NS