Remembrance –
May 14, 2018 – While Margot Kidder is best known for her recurring role as Lois Lane in the original Superman films, she will also be remembered for her long and courageous battle with bipolar disorder, once known as manic depression. The actress died at the age of 69 on Sunday at her home in Livingston, Montana, PEOPLE confirmed on Monday. Her cause of death is unknown. “The reality of my life has been grand and wonderful, punctuated by these odd blips and burps of madness,” Kidder told PEOPLE for a cover story in 1996, not long after her last reported manic episode, which left her homeless for a time. In the same interview, Kidder called the incident “the most public freak-out in history,” adding, “I was like one of those ladies you see talking to the space aliens on the street corner in New York.”
While the four-day disappearance was her most highly-publicized episode, it was not the first time she had made headlines since rising to prominence as Lois Lane in 1978’s Superman. There were addictions and recoveries, husbands and divorces, a number of boyfriends (including Superman III costar Richard Pryor and former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau), episodes of bizarre behavior and an auto accident that left her bankrupt and partially paralyzed in 1990.
