The actress Margot Kidder, best known for her role as Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the 1978 movie Superman the Movie, passed away yesterday in her home in Montana. She was 69.
Though her career spanned more than 50 years, she is perhaps best known for the role of Lois Lane. Funeral arrangements for the Canadian-born actress are pending.
Kidder began acting in the late 1960s, but rose to fame in 1978 for her role as Lois Lane in Superman: The Movie opposite Christopher Reeve. She went on to reprise the part in the movie’s three sequels. Of Reeve, she said, “When you’re strapped to someone hanging from the ceiling for months and months, you get pretty darned close,” and ” I can’t stop thinking about Christopher because he was such a huge part of my life. He was just such a great guy. …He was complicated, very smart, really smart, and he knew he’d done something meaningful. He was very aware of that and very happy with that role.”
Kidder also starred as Kathy Lutz in The Amityville Horror (1979), and appeared in movies such as Black Christmas (1974) and Heartaches (1981). Kidder acted as producer and starred as Eliza Doolittle in a 1983 adaptation of Pygmalion with Peter O’Toole for Showtime.
Open about her struggle with manic depression and bipolar disorder, she had become homeless in 1996 and became an advocate for mental health awareness after that. Kidder told interviewers at the time that the root of most of her problems — which include “mood swings that could knock over a building” — was manic depression. She was first diagnosed with the condition by an L.A. psychiatrist eight years prior, but she refused to take the recommended prescription of lithium, the recommended treatment.
“It’s very hard to convince a manic person that there is anything wrong with them,” said Kidder, who was working on a memoir at the time. “You have no desire to sleep. You are full of ideas.”
She is survived by her daughter, Maggie McGuane.
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