Margot Kidder (born October 17, 1948) is a Canadian-American film and television actress who achieved fame playing Lois Lane in the Superman movies of the 1970s and 1980s.
Kidder was born Margaret Ruth Kidder in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, one of five children of Jill, a history teacher, and Kendall Kidder, an explosives expert and mining engineer. She was born in Yellowknife because of her father's job, which required the family to live in remote locations. She has a sister, Annie, and three brothers, John, Michael and Peter. Kidder's niece, Janet Kidder, is also an actress.
In the late 1960s, Kidder was based in Toronto, and appeared in a number of TV drama series for the CBC, including a guest appearance on Wojeck, and a semi-regular role as a young reporter on McQueen. Later, she made an appearance as a barmaid in Nichols, a short-lived James Garner vehicle made for American television. She also appeared in a number of low-budget Canadian movies in the early 1970s before going on to star in the Brian de Palma psychological thriller Sisters (1973) and the horror film Black Christmas (1974). A nude pictorial of Kidder, photographed by Douglas Kirkland, was published in the March 1975 issue of Playboy. The accompanying article was written by her as a condition of appearing: Kidder said "I don't want someone writing 'Margot Kidder has more curves than the Pacific Coast Highway' under my picture."
Kidder is best known for her role as Lois Lane in the 1978 movie Superman and its sequels. Kidder brought more depth to the role than previous actresses, portraying Lane as an ambitious and headstrong, yet vulnerable and emotionally lonely woman trying to make it in a man's world. After she publicly expressed her disgust to the producers, Alexander Salkind and Ilya Salkind, over the firing of Richard Donner from 1980's Superman II, her role in 1983's Superman III consisted of less than 5 minutes of footage. Her role in 1987's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was more substantial. In addition to the Superman movies, Kidder has starred in The Amityville Horror, Willie and Phil, and The Great Waldo Pepper opposite Robert Redford. She has also made uncredited cameo appearances in Maverick and Delirious.
In 1983, Kidder produced and starred as Eliza Doolittle in a TV version of Pygmalion with Peter O'Toole. She has also done extensive stage work, including The Vagina Monologues.
In 1994, Kidder played the bartender at the "Broken Skull" tavern in Under a Killing Moon, an IBM PC adventure game.
In 2004, Kidder briefly returned to the Superman franchise in two episodes of the television program Smallville, as Dr. Bridgette Crosby, an emissary of Dr. Swann (played by her Superman co-star, Christopher Reeve). Also that year Kidder made an appearance on a Canadian sitcom, Robson Arms, set in an apartment block in Vancouver's west end. She played a quirky neighbor of the main cast members.
In 2007, Kidder started appearing on the television series Brothers and Sisters, playing Emily Craft.
In the past, Kidder dated former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau. She has been married and divorced three times: to American playwright Thomas McGuane (by whom she had her only child, daughter Maggie [now Maggie Kirn], in 1976); to actor John Heard; and to French film director Philippe de Broca (she suffered a miscarriage during that marriage). None of the marriages lasted longer than a year. Since her divorce from De Broca, she has said that she prefers the companionship of her dogs.
Kidder raised some hackles in the early 1990s during the first Gulf War, when she ridiculed the press and the military for not seeing the larger consequences of their actions.
Kidder became a United States citizen on August 17, 2005, in Butte, Montana; she lives in nearby Livingston. She said the reason for her decision to become an American citizen is to participate in the voting process, to continue her protests against U.S. intervention in Iraq, and at the same time to be free of worries about being deported.
Kidder has bipolar disorder which led to a widely publicized manic breakdown in 1996. She is an advocate of orthomolecular medicine as a treatment for the disorder. Kidder was involved in a serious car crash back in 1990, she was unable to work for two years. As a result of the unemployability she went bankrupt. A couple years later, 1996, she was found by police in a distressed state, supposedly hiding from someone in a stranger's garden because she was stalked and attacked. At that point, her hair was cut off and she was placed in psychiatric care. Authorities could find no proof to support her stories.
According to experts, her much publicised behavior in 1996 was due to manic depression. During that period, she was convinced that her first husband wanted to kill her. She ended up being homeless, she escaped being raped and wandered through the streets of Los Angeles before hiding beneath a family's porch that was located close to the studio where Superman (1978) was filmed.
