Margot Kidder Would Have Been 78 Today: Inside The ’96 Breakdown That Left Her Hiding In A Stranger’s Yard

Margot Kidder was born on October 17, 1948, in Yellowknife, a mining town in Canada’s Northwest Territories. She would have turned 78 today. Kidder died at her home in Livingston, Montana, on May 13, 2018, at age 69.

Moviegoers knew her best as Lois Lane, the quick-tongued Daily Planet reporter who could never quite see Superman behind Clark Kent’s glasses. Her take on the role still has admirers in the business. Rachel Brosnahan, who played Lois in James Gunn’s 2025 Superman, has said she was a fan of Kidder’s original Lois, according to CBS News.

Eighteen years after the first Superman, the woman who played Lois Lane vanished from an airport. When she turned up days later, she was hiding behind a stranger’s house in a Los Angeles suburb. What led her there began years earlier.

How Did Lois Lane Make Margot Kidder A Star?

Her film career took off after a lead role in Brian De Palma’s Sisters in 1972, according to NPR. She built a following in horror from there. She starred in the holiday chiller Black Christmas in 1974. In 1979 she played opposite James Brolin in The Amityville Horror.

Kidder played Lois opposite Christopher Reeve in four films. The run began with Superman in 1978 and continued through Superman II and Superman III. It ended with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in 1987. The 1978 original was a blockbuster that made both her and Reeve stars, NBC News noted.

Her Lois was no damsel waiting by the window. She chased stories, misspelled words and flirted on her own terms. The rooftop interview and moonlit flight in the first film remain two of the most remembered scenes from the series.

Off screen, the late 1980s and early 1990s were far harder than anything Lois faced.

What Was Margot Kidder Up Against By The 1990s?

In 1990, a car accident in Vancouver left her disabled for a year, according to a 1996 Maclean’s report. Medical bills bankrupted her. Yahoo also reported that the crash kept her out of work and that she filed for bankruptcy.

Kidder lived with bipolar disorder for much of her adult life. For years she fought it privately, NBC News reported. That changed in 1996.

That year she was writing her memoir. A computer virus wiped out three years of work on it, according to Fox News, and the stress sent her into a manic spiral. NBC News also reported that she later traced the episode to losing the computer she used for the book.

How Did She Rebuild After The Headlines?

After a widely reported manic episode in 1996, she chose to talk about her illness in public rather than hide it. She became an advocate for mental health awareness, NPR reported. For years afterward, she spoke at events and in interviews to encourage others to seek help.

She also kept working. She had a recurring role on TV’s Boston Common in 1997 and appeared in Halloween II in 2009, NPR noted. Late in her career she won a Daytime Emmy for a guest role on the children’s series R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour. Readers who want the full story of her later years can find it in our look at whatever happened to Margot Kidder.

Kidder had one child, her daughter Maggie McGuane, from her marriage to novelist Thomas McGuane. Montana became home in her later years, and in 2005 she became a U.S. citizen in Butte while keeping her Canadian citizenship.

Through all of it, she never hid the April week that made her a headline. She described it plainly in interviews, and police and reporters filled in the rest.

What Really Happened In April 1996?

In April 1996, Kidder was 47. She went missing from Los Angeles International Airport, Maclean’s reported. For three or four days no one knew where she was. Maclean’s put the gap at three days, while Fox News and NBC News said four.

She surfaced in Glendale, a Los Angeles suburb about 25 miles from the airport. A homeowner there found her frightened and disheveled in his backyard and called police. Fox News reported that she was found in a stranger’s backyard. NPR said she was hiding in the bushes behind a house. Glendale police spokesman Sgt. Rick Young described her as “frightened and paranoid,” according to Maclean’s.

She had crudely cut off her own hair to keep from being recognized. She believed one of her ex-husbands wanted her dead, Maclean’s and NBC News reported. Police took her to a Los Angeles-area hospital for a psychiatric examination, Maclean’s reported, and NBC News said she was taken in for treatment. Fox News reported that she had been homeless for a short time.

Five months later, she spoke to People magazine. She described “mood swings that could knock over a building,” Fox News reported. She was honest that it might happen again. “I’m not saying it’s all over,” she told People, as NPR recalled. “I’m saying this is the pattern of my life. In three years I might be having another wig-out. I have no idea. I just have to accept the fact that this is me, or I ain’t gonna make it.”