Margot Kidder, Actress Who Found Movie Stardom in ‘Superman,’ Dies at 69 Image

Margot Kidder, Actress Who Found Movie Stardom in ‘Superman,’ Dies at 69

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By Neil Genzlinger

May 14, 2018

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 on Sunday at her home in Livingston, Mont. She was 69.

Her death was confirmed by Camilla Fluxman Pines, her manager, who did not specify a cause.

Ms. Kidder appeared in more than 130 films and television shows beginning in the late 1960s, and by the mid-’70s, when she took a break from acting after her daughter was born, she was already 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. But it left some critics lukewarm.

“For me it’s as if somebody had constructed a building as tall as the World Trade Center in the color and shape of a carrot,” Vincent Canby, though charmed by Ms. Kidder, wrote in his review in The New York Times. “Rabbits might admire it. They might even write learned critiques about it and find it both an inspiration and a reward, while the rest of us would see nothing but an alarmingly large, imitation carrot.”

Audiences, though, 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 Ms. Kidder reunited for “Superman II” (1980), “Superman III” (1983) and “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” (1987).

The year after the original “Superman” was released, Ms. Kidder starred in another box-office smash, “The Amityville Horror,” in which she and James Brolin played a couple doing battle with a possessed house.

Her other films included “The Great Waldo Pepper” (1975), with Robert Redford; “The Reincarnation of Peter Proud” (1975), with Michael Sarrazin and Jennifer O’Neill; and “Some Kind of Hero” (1982), in which she starred opposite Richard Pryor.

Ms. Kidder appeared in dozens of television series as well. One was “Smallville,” the long-running WB (and later CW) series based on the Superman saga, in which she turned up in two episodes in 2004, though not as Lois Lane. Mr. Reeve had also appeared in a small role in several episodes of that series before his death in 2004.

Ms. 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.”