Actress Margot Kidder, who is most well known for her role as Lois Lane in the best Superman movies passed away yesterday at the age of 69.
The Canadian-born actress was also known for her roles in the horror films Black Christmas, The Amityville Horror and later on in her career worked on television shows like The L Word and was even a guest on then The WB’s Smallville.
Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane is probably, outside of the animated series version, the best version of the character we’ve ever gotten. As Syfy Wire’s Courtney Enlow put it: “Her work was her passion, her work was her life, her work was her love truer than she could possibly find with Superman. She was confident and driven in a way women so rarely are allowed to be—because she never questioned herself, the film didn’t question her either, and so she was never knocked down a peg or put into her “place,” whatever the nebulous concept of a woman’s “place” might be in any given scenario. She was a source of human strength in a film about superhuman strength.”
When you look at the history of Lois Lane and how she was treated not only by writers, who often put her in the “little lady role,” but also fans who couldn’t see her tenacity as a good thing (silver age fans wanted Superman to spank Lois because she was annoying), Kidder’s version is even more amazing. There are very few who have been able to really perfectly gel into the legacy of Lois Lane, and Terri Hatcher is probably a close second, but there is something special about Kidder. Something about her that feels whole and true. She feels like an adult (Kidder was actually older than Christopher Reeve) and even she is in danger, you never feel like she’s weak.
A longtime liberal and political activist, Kidder struggled very openly with bipolar disorder and manic depression that was well documented because of an episode she had following her computer failing and losing three-years worth of drafts. She entered what she called a “manic state” after realizing all of her work was lost and disappeared for four days. It wasn’t until she was forced into therapy that she was able to get a handle on her health. Since then, much like Carrie Fisher, Kidder had been outspoken about her healing process and learning to accept her diagnosis.
“The reality of my life has been grand and wonderful, punctuated by these odd blips and burps of madness […] I’m not saying it’s all over,” she says in a PEOPLE interview. “I’m saying this is the pattern of my life. In three years I might be having another wig-out. I have no idea. I just have to accept the fact that this is me, or I ain’t gonna make it.”
So far, the cause of death has not been said, but I hope that it was peaceful and that she got to enjoy Mother’s Day with her daughter before she passed away.
(via Deadline, image: Warner Bros)
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