‘SHE HAS CREATED AN ENDURING LEGACY’
Activist’s life was defined by fight for environment, civil rights, mental health
Canadian who found movie fame as Lois Lane became advocate for mental health issues,
Margot Kidder, who with a raspy voice and snappy delivery brought Lois Lane to life in the hit 1978 film Superman and three sequels, died Sunday at her home in Livingston, Montana. She was 69.
Her death was confirmed by Camilla Fluxman Pines, her manager, who did not specify a cause.
“We are deeply saddened by Margot’s unexpected death,” Annie Kidder, Margot’s sister, a well-known education activist in Toronto, said in a statement.
“She was a beloved mother, sister and aunt and a truly larger-than-life presence to her fans, to those who worked with her for the public good, and to all who knew her. “Her passion and commitment to the arts, civil and Indigenous people’s rights, mental health and the environment were inspirations to us all and epitomized in her work,” the statement said. “She has created an enduring legacy as an actor, a Canadian and, most importantly, as a member of our family.”
Kidder appeared in more than 130 films and television shows beginning in the late 1960s and by the mid-1970s, when she took a break from acting after her daughter was born, she was working steadily. But
Superman, her return to moviemaking, rocketed her to a new level of fame.
The film, directed by Richard Donner, was one of the most expensive ever made to that point. And while it left some critics lukewarm, audiences loved it. Superman became the second-highest-grossing movie of the year, trailing only Grease. It starred Christopher Reeve in the title role, and he and Kidder reunited for Superman II (1980), Superman III (1983) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). Her other films included The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), starring fellow Canadian Michael Sarrazin, The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), The Amityville Horror (1979), Some Kind of Hero (1982) and Halloween II (2009). She appeared in dozens of television series as well.
Kidder also became known for a breakdown she had in 1996, when she was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. She talked openly about her condition thereafter, bristling at the words “mental illness.”
“They are a stigma and recall times when it was thought those with a disorder were possessed by the devil,” she told the Edmonton Journal in 2008. “I hope someone can come up with new words.”
Margaret Ruth Kidder was born Oct. 17, 1948, in Yellowknife. Her mother, Margaret, was a teacher, and her father, Kendall, was an explosives expert whose job entailed taking the family to whatever remote place ore had been discovered.
“I read books,” she told the Montana Standard in 2016, “and hung out with friends in the woods or at the hockey rink. We’d get Montreal on the shortwave radio once a week. That was about it for entertainment.”
Eventually her parents sent her to boarding school in Toronto, where she started acting in school plays. She later attended the University of British Columbia.
In the late 1960s, she landed her first TV roles, in Canadian series such as Wojeck, McQueen and Corwin. Her first film was the Norman Jewison comedy Gaily, Gaily in 1969. Among her 1975 films was 92 in the Shade, written and directed by novelist Thomas McGuane, whom she married in 1976; they divorced the next year. Her marriages to actor John Heard in 1979 and director Philippe de Broca in 1983 also ended in divorce.
In the 1980s, she was also linked romantically to Pierre Trudeau, who was prime minister from 1980 to 1984. Kidder, who had a long history of involvement with the antinuclear movement and other liberal causes (she was arrested at the White House in 2011 while protesting against the Keystone XL Pipeline), was credited in John English’s biog- raphy of Trudeau, published in 2006, with influencing some of his political stances.
In 1990, Kidder suffered a spinal injury in a minor car accident and she ended up in debt as a result. Her breakdown in 1996, during which she wandered Los Angeles for three days before being found dazed in a stranger’s backyard, received considerable publicity.
She credited natural treatments with helping her and she continued her acting career. Kidder also had a 2002 Broadway gig in The Vagina Monologues, as well as appearances on TV shows in the 2000s, including Law & Order: SVU, The L Word, Brothers & Sisters, Smallville and R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, which won her an Emmy in 2015.
Kidder’s survivors include her daughter, Maggie McGuane, and two grandchildren.
Donner said he had first become aware of Kidder through the TV series Nichols, on which she was a regular in the early 1970s. In a 2016 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, he recalled the session that resulted in her getting the role of Lois Lane, the feisty reporter who works alongside Clark Kent and pines for Superman, unaware that they are the same person.
“When I met her in the casting office,” he said, “she tripped coming in, and I just fell in love with her. It was perfect.”
The Star’s Richard Ouzounian wrote in 2010 that, on the way to her golden years, she radiated energy to light up a room.
She was starring in a show called Love, Loss and What I Wore, written by Nora and Delia Ephron, while in Toronto.
“One of the things when you pass 60 is that your life gets to be about a series of losses that mount like a funeral pyre,” she told the Star. “You develop a hyper-awareness that you’re in the last stretch. It’s very liberating and very empowering in some ways, but it’s also bittersweet. It’s a very Buddhist place you have to get into if you’re going to cope with all of it.”
In recent years, she often worked with Frank D’Angelo, the local beverage business owner who has also written and directed several films, and the pair became friends.
“I made five movies with her, and she would have been in every single one of my movies, except logistically she was busy fighting the Keystone pipeline,” D’Angelo said. “She was just a straight-up great human being, and everyone on the set loved her.”
D’Angelo had her as a guest on his Being Frank talk show, saying she was very candid about her past.
“The last time I was in contact with Margot, she contacted me five-six weeks ago, when my dad passed away, to give her condolences to me. It’s been a brutal year,” D’Angelo said. “She was a great Canadian. She deserves to be celebrated as one of the best actors that ever existed in this country. I loved her.”