Margot Kidder

Margot Kidder
At the 2005 Canadian National Expo. Photo by Jeremy Allin.

Margot Kidder (born October 17, 1948) is a Canadian-American film and television actress best known for playing Lois Lane in the Superman movies of the 1970s and 1980s.

Biography

Early life

Kidder, one of five children, was born Margaret Ruth Kidder in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, the daughter of Jill (née Wilson), 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.

Career

In the late 1960s, Kidder was based in Toronto, and appeared in a number of TV drama series for the CBC, including guest appearances on Wojeck, Adventures in Rainbow Country, 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 late 1960s (The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar being her first feature) and 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."

Superman film series

Kidder is best known for her role as Lois Lane in the 1978 film Superman: The Movie 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. She publicly disagreed with the decision of producers Alexander Salkind and Ilya Salkind to replace Richard Donner as director of 1980's Superman II. As a result, Kidder's role in 1983's Superman III consisted of less than five minutes of footage. Her role in 1987's relatively unsuccessful Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was more substantial.

Other film and television roles

In addition to the Superman movies, Kidder has starred in The Amityville Horror, Willie and Phil, Some Kind of Hero with Richard Pryor 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. In the late 1980s, she appeared in introductions for the Discovery Channel's "Best of the BBC" series of repackaged documentaries, among them Making of a Continent. 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. She also had a cameo in Rich Hall's Election Special on BBC4.

In 2007, Kidder started appearing on the television series Brothers and Sisters, playing Emily Craft. Additionally, Kidder played Sally Cima, and was the mother of protagonist Greg Cima, a high school tailback for Kanab High School in Kanab, Utah, in the film Windrunner.

Personal life

In the past, Kidder dated former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau and director Brian DePalma. She has been married and divorced three times: to American playwright Thomas McGuane (by whom she had her only child, daughter Maggie, in 1976); to actor John Heard; and to French film director Philippe de Broca. 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. She has one grandchild, Mazie Kirn, from her daughter's marriage to the novelist Walter Kirn.

In the early 1990s, during the first Gulf War, Kidder was branded by some parts of the media a "Baghdad Betty" and subjected to abuse for remarks questioning the war and ridiculing the press and the military for not seeing the larger consequences of their actions.

Kidder was involved in a serious car crash in 1990, after which she was unable to work for two years, causing her serious financial problems.

Kidder has bipolar disorder, which led to a widely publicized manic episode in 1996. Kidder was found by Los Angeles police in a distressed state, naked and paranoid. She was placed in psychiatric care.

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.

External links

• Margot Kidder at IMDb
• Article: From paranoid delusions to orthomolecular medicine
• Canadian Film Encyclopedia [A publication of The Film Reference Library/a division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group]