EXCLUSIVE: How Lois Lane Star Margot Kidder Fell Victim to 'Curse of Superman' — Ending Up Sad, Homeless and Pulling Out Her Own Teeth
Lois Lane Star Margot Kidder saw dark days after starring. inthe popular 'Superman' film.
July 16 2025, Published 11:30 a.m. ET
Director James Gunn may have put a slick slant on Superman with his ultra-woke, megabucks big-screen revival featuring the Man of Steel.
But its cast and crew are suffering one kryptonite-like effect from making the movie, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
A source tells us they are all praying they will not all be hit by the "Curse of Superman."
The 'Curse of Superman' may rear its head again.
The term refers to the belief actors who have played Superman in various movie and TV adaptations are doomed to die or suffer horrific “consequences” of taking the part.
It’s a curse linked to the deaths of George Reeves (who played Superman in the 1950s TV series) and Christopher Reeve (who played Superman in the 1970s/80s films) – as well as the struggles of actors like Kirk Alyn (who starred in the 1948 serial.)
Reeves suffered a mysterious death by gunshot wound Reeve was famously paralyze in a horseback riding accident.
Alyn sunk into depression as he battled to find other roles after playing Superman, while Marlon Brando – who played the flying alien’s dad alongside Reeve – ended up a bloated, tortured wreck who grew so fat he needed extra large baths fitted in his hotel rooms.
But most have forgotten the horrific "curses" suffered by the world’s most famous Lois Lane star – Margot Kidder.
She once said about being desperate to play the ambitious reporter who steals Superman’s heart in Reeve’s run of movies: “I had to get that part. Not because I wanted to be Lois Lane – because I needed to escape.”
But what began as an escape would end in a breakdown so severe she was found homeless, paranoid – and yanking her own teeth out with her fingers in a back alley in Los Angeles.
Kidder played Lois Lane in 1978, but saw dark days afterwards.
The actress, who died in 2018 aged 69, shot to global fame for her fearless, funny portrayal of Lane in Superman, Richard Donner’s 1978 blockbuster that launched the modern cinema blockbuster superhero era.
But her defining role masked years of mental illness, addiction and spiraling instability. Kidder became perhaps the most tragic victim of the so-called "Superman curse."
In 1996, she vanished from public view. She had grown convinced her ex-husband, novelist Thomas McGuane, was stalking her and believed her life was in danger.
The actress, here with Christopher Reeve, suffered from mental illness and addiction.
She went missing for four days and was discovered dirty, shoeless, and incoherent in a Glendale backyard. Several of her teeth had been removed – pulled out by Kidder herself, in a psychotic episode.
She later said she did it so she couldn’t be tracked through dental records.
“I was like one of those ladies you see yelling at the space aliens on the street corner,” she said. “There were days I just wanted to die.”
It was a far fall for the woman once hailed as the highest-paid Canadian actress of her generation. Kidder had become an icon after her performance opposite Reeve, giving Superman its emotional core as the plucky Daily Planet reporter.
But fame came fast and never sat easily with her. “Fame is weird, is what it really is,” she once said. “It’s the weirdest thing in the world.”
Born in 1948 in Yellowknife, in Canada’s remote Northwest Territories, Kidder’s father was a mining engineer, her mother a history teacher. A trip to New York aged 12, where she saw Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway, sparked her desire for a different life.
“That was it. I knew I had to go far away,” she later said.
She became part of a freewheeling, drug-fueled Hollywood scene in the early 1970s, sharing a home with actress Jennifer Salt.
The house became a haven for rising talents including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Brian De Palma, who cast her in Sisters.
She died in 2018.
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“We were idealistic innocents, darling, despite the drugs and sex,” she recalled.
But personal chaos followed her throughout her life.
Her first marriage, to McGuane, ended in 1977 after she fled their Montana ranch. “I mostly sat around and wept in closets,” she confessed in a magazine interview.
Desperate to escape, she set her sights on Superman.
Her agent, Rick Nicita, said: “She called from Montana and said, ‘I’m coming back to the business.’ I told her she had to fly in.
“She tried to cancel – said she had a cutting horse class. I told her, ‘No way.’”
She won the part with determination, though she admitted she had no confidence in the film.
The actress said: “When I first met Christopher Reeve he was the skinniest, dorkiest guy you could imagine. I thought, this is Superman? I just kept saying to myself, ‘Look like you love him.’”
But after Superman, roles dried up. A 1990 car accident also left Kidder with a spinal injury and chronic pain. She refused surgery out of fear of paralysis, turning instead to prescription drugs.
“I was muddled,” she once admitted. When her insurer refused to cover the costs, she was left with six-figure debt. The breakdown came soon after.
She never fully returned to Hollywood, retreating to rural Montana where she became a political activist and mental health advocate. In later years, she came to see Superman with pride.
She declared: “My grandkids watch it and think I was Superman’s friend.
“That’s a thrill.”
