LOS ANGELES -- Margot Kidder, the Canadian actress who starred as a salty and cynical Lois Lane opposite Christopher Reeve in the Superman film franchise of the 1970s and 1980s, has died.
Kidder died Sunday at her home in Livingston, Mont., according to a notice on the website of Franzen-Davis Funeral Home. She was 69.
Kidder's manager Camilla Fluxman Pines said she died peacefully in her sleep. No cause or other details were given.
Superman, directed by Richard Donner and released in 1978, was a superhero blockbuster two decades before comic book movies became the norm at the top of the box office.
Kidder, as ace reporter Lane, was a salty, sexually savvy adult who played off of the boyish, farm-raised charm of Reeve's Clark Kent and Superman, though her dogged journalism constantly got her into dangerous scrapes that required old-fashioned rescues.
Kidder and Reeve were relative unknowns when they got their leading parts. Kidder and Reeve went on to star in three more Superman movies, the fourth and last in 1987.
She said she and Reeve, who died in 2004, were like brother and sister, both in their affection and animosity for each other. Both would remain known for their Superman roles, and they struggled to find other major parts.
Kidder had a debilitating car accident in 1990 that left her badly in debt, confined her to a wheelchair for most of two years and worsened the mental illness she had struggled with for much of her life.
That struggle became public in 1996 when she was found dazed and filthy in a yard not far from the studio where she once filmed parts of Superman.
She fought through her illness and continued working, however, appearing in small films and television shows, most notably R.L. Stine's the Haunting Hour, which earned her a Daytime Emmy Award as outstanding performer in a kids series in 2015.
She spent the last decades of her life living in Montana and engaging in political activism, including protesting the U.S. military action in Iraq.
A Section on 05/15/2018