James Gunn’s Superman brought DC superheroes into a new era, an era where they are not just competing with their Marvel counterparts, but perhaps doing slightly better than them. Things weren’t always like this; for several decades, right up until the release of Iron Man (2008), DC superheroes dominated the landscape. Christopher Reeve’s Superman (1978) is a cornerstone of the genre. Margot Kidder played the character of Lois Lane in four Superman films, and just like her character, she was a hyper-independent woman who didn’t play by others’ rules. She had a tragic life, marked by mental illness and personal demons. She experienced homelessness, a professional slump, and wanted her body to be fed to the wolves.
Born Margaret Ruth Kidder, she was one of five children. After beginning her career with low-budget Canadian films, Kidder broke out with films such as Sisters (1972) and Black Christmas (1974). When she was 30, Kidder was chosen to play the famed Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane alongside Reeve in Richard Donner’s Superman. The role changed her life and elevated her to international stardom. But no one stopped to ask Kidder if she really wanted the fame. Kidder told The Independent in 1997 that she never wanted to be in the limelight at all. She said, “There is a sense of having to put on this phony face when you go out in public. I wasn’t very good at it, and it filled me with anxiety and panic. I had to hide the manic depression, for one thing. I just felt inadequate for the job.” No one realised how serious things were for her, and no one realised that she was suffering from bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
Margot Kidder as Barb in Black Christmas (1974). (Photo; IMDb)
Kidder had always been very open about her mental health problems, which is something that helped her take control of her narrative. Her personal demons didn’t stop her from living the life of a Hollywood star, a star who partied with the greatest artistic minds of the last century, and a heart that just wanted to live on despite everything that was pulling it down. The shindigs she would host at her infamous Malibu beach house with Jennifer Salt had quite an interesting guest list: directors Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, actor Susan Sarandon, and more. The book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind talks about the parties in detail, but somehow, the description never sat well with Kidder.
Superman (Christopher Reeve) and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) in the film Superman. (Express Archive)
In an old interview that she gave to director Phil van Tongeren and film journalist Roel Haanen during a convention in the Netherlands, Kidder talked about the book and expressed her disdain towards how the author talked about the cocaine-fueled lifestyle she led with her friends. She said, “He made it seem so tacky. It was such an innocent time in the sixties. And you guys are obviously… probably your parents were hippies like us. But he made it seem like it was sordid. It was drugs and sex, yes, but it was sweet. We were very, very innocent, and we really thought we could change the world.” Interestingly, Kidder wanted to be behind the camera as well and even made a short film for the American Film Institute. She also got a chance to shoot a documentary about the making of the film Missouri Breaks, starring Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, but apparently the footage she shot was too controversial and would have landed a lot of people in hot water, so she was fired. She told Los Angeles Times about it and said, “I mean, I thought they wanted a real documentary. So I filmed all the behind-the-scenes rows and arguments and shot footage of the vet shooting up the horses with tranquilizers so the actors would look as if they rode well. What an idiot I was. Then when they fired me, I realized what they’d wanted was a publicity film.”
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After reaching the upper echelons of fame, Kidder got into a horrible accident in 1990. She was temporarily paralysed, and her undiagnosed bipolar disorder finally reared its ugly head, and the actor went through a very public episode. According to report by People magazine, she wandered around the streets of LA for days, lived in a cardboard shack with a man named Charlie, and even fended off a rape attempt by a homeless man. After disappearing for a few days, she was found passed out in a stranger’s garden. Upon encountering the homeowner she said, “I may not look like it, but I’m Margot Kidder.” The owner called 911, and the actor was taken to the hospital. The tabloids that had been making fun of her poor financial condition post the accident now understood that there was something seriously wrong with her, and she needed help.
A year after the incident, Kidder decided to be upfront about her mental illness in the hopes that her being vocal might help others in their pursuit of a healthy life. She admitted everything she was going through and even thanked the homeless people who took care of her while she was all alone and in debt. She soon found some more work and started working more as an activist during the late ’90s and early 2000s. She told the AVClub in 2009 that she was going to write a memoir and name it I slept with everyone on television. She said, “I was in the airport in Minneapolis, and I thought, ‘S***, what you have to do is have something that catches the eye of people going from Minneapolis to New York that looks like a good, easy read on a plane.’ So that title would sell out right away.” But the memoir never came to life. Kidder was known for being in a relationship with the likes of Scarface and Mission Impossible director De Palma and Richard Pryor of Harlem Nights and Superman III, and she reportedly even had an affair with Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, father of Justin Trudeau. She was married three times, but none of the marriages lasted.
Margot Kidder. (Photo: Reuters)
Many know that Kidder had asked her friends to keep her death a secret. She wanted them to take her body into the Montana woods and leave it there for the wolves. Her friend Ted Geoghegan told NBC, “Margot lived at the foot of Canyon Mountain, right outside of Livingston. Like much of Montana, the mountain was filled with wolves. But instead of fearing them, Margot loved them. She left meat out for the wolves so she could watch them come down the mountain and eat from the safety of her home… She’d asked her closest friends—if they stopped by her place and found her dead—to tell no one, place her naked body in a bedsheet, drag it up Canyon Mountain, and leave her for her other friends, the wolves.”
Towards the end, she even sheltered homeless addicts in her house as she drowned herself in drugs and alcohol, and the coroner’s report labelled her death as “self-inflicted drug and alcohol overdose.” The real-life Lois Lane rallied against George Bush, campaigned for Bernie Sanders, partied till the wheels came off in her 20s, and fed wolves in her spare time from her back porch. She was broken, ill, alone, and troubled, but she was brutally honest about it all. The good, the bad, and the ugly were all laid out in front of the world, and still Kidder shone through as a beautiful human being, who was misunderstood all her life and left the world still unknown by its inhabitants.
