Very sad news today... Margot Kidder passed away Sunday at the age of 69. No cause of death has been reported at this time. Kidder was dating Brian De Palma when she starred with her good friend Jennifer Salt in De Palma's Sisters, released in 1973. De Palma had given them each a copy of the screenplay for Christmas. Kidder and Salt were sharing a Nicholas Canyon beach house together in Malibu in the early 1970s, where they held parties and met De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, Paul Schrader, and many many more.

In 1974, Kidder was part of the inaugural class of AFI's Directing Workshop for Women, along with Ellen Burstyn, Lee Grant, and Maya Angelou, among others. Kidder, of course, is most famous for her role as Lois Lane in Richard Donner's 1978 box office smash Superman (and its sequel, Superman II, which was finished by director Richard Lester after Donner was fired). Other notable films include Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), George Roy Hill's The Great Waldo Pepper (with co-star Robert Redford, 1975), J. Lee Thompson's The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), and The Amityville Horror (1979).

From the New York Times obit today by Neil Genzlinger:

Margaret Ruth Kidder was born on Oct. 17, 1948, in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Her mother, Margaret, was a teacher, and her father, Kendall, was an explosives expert whose job entailed taking the family to whatever remote place ore had been discovered.

“I read books,” she told The Montana Standard in 2016, “and hung out with friends in the woods or at the hockey rink. We’d get Montreal on the shortwave radio once a week. That was about it for entertainment.”

Eventually her parents sent her to boarding school in Toronto, where she started acting in school plays. She later attended the University of British Columbia.

In the late 1960s she landed her first TV roles, in Canadian series like “Wojeck,” “McQueen” and “Corwin.” Her first film was the Norman Jewison comedy “Gaily, Gaily” in 1969.

Among her films in 1975 was “92 in the Shade,” written and directed by the novelist Thomas McGuane, whom she married in 1976; they divorced the next year. Her marriages to the actor John Heard in 1979 and the director Philippe de Broca in 1983 also ended in divorce.

Margaret Ruth Kidder was born in Canada and honed her acting skills on TV shows such as McQueen, Nichols, Banacek and Mod Squad before becoming a movie star.

After landing a lead role in Brian de Palma's Sisters in 1972, Kidder's film career took off. It hit the stratosphere six years later, when she appeared as Lois Lane in the launching of the Superman film franchise. She went on to appear in three sequels over the next nine years.

Famous for her smoky voice and for portraying smart, indomitable characters, Kidder also struggled with addiction and bipolar disorder for much of her life. She suffered from a famous breakdown in 1996, when she disappeared for several days. When police found her in Glendale, Calif., she was hiding in the bushes behind a house.

After Kidder recovered from that incident, she became an advocate for mental health awareness.

"I'm not saying it's all over," Kidder told People magazine after her life derailed in 1996. "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."

Kidder went to take dozens of other acting jobs, from recurring roles on TV's Boston Common in 1997 to 2009's Halloween II.

For decades, Kidder had lived in a log cabin near Livingston. In addition to promoting mental health issues, she spoke publicly as an anti-war and environmental activist.

As previously reported, a few days prior to De Palma's Cinémathèque Masterclass, De Palma and Lehman will sign copies of Are Snakes Necessary? at 7pm May 30th at Librairie Millepages in Vincennes, an eastern suburb of Paris.

Previously:
Paris Cinémathèque teases De Palma Retrospective

The day kicks off with the original King Kong from 1933.

Barton Brock is director of the campaign for a US Senator named Joe Crump. Unscrupulous, he judges that all shots are allowed, which is why he is recruiting a young waitress named Elizabeth de Carlo to compromise the opponent of Crump, a notorious Don Juan. But Elizabeth has more than one trick up her sleeve ...

In recently published update of the book Brian De Palma : entretiens avec Samuel Blumenfeld et Laurent Vachaud, De Palma revealed a bit more of how the novel came together:

My partner Susan Lehman and I wrote a novel together you know? A political thriller, according to an idea I had for a scenario. I am very good at designing the plot and dialogues, it's the characters, and all the rest has been written together [with four hands]. It was sent to one of my agents at ICM who didn't know what to do with it. I think it's very commercial material. And as I am in France, I thought maybe I could edit it in your country. I sent the manuscript to a friend in Paris who recommended an editor in France, we'll see. As you get older, you always have ideas, but it's more difficult to be able to mount them when you reach an age like mine. So it's easier to make novels. Kazan knew that too.

What is the subject of your novel?

It's pretty close to Blow Out. I combined several ideas that I had. The main character is a senator who comes to the elections. There is also his campaign director, a malicious character, and a photographer who finds himself hired to take pictures on a film that is the French version of Vertigo! After all, you know that Vertigo is inspired by a French novel by Boileau and Narcejac. There's all this and I had a lot of fun. We did this last summer.

There was an intimate VIP gathering after the “Scarface” reunion at the Tribeca Film Festival, spies said.

Walking into the Carlyle following a screening at the Beacon Theatre were director Brian De Palma and star Al Pacino, along with Robert De Niro, Barry Levinson and Marthe Keller, Pacino’s co-star from the 1977 film “Bobby Deerfield.”

The high-powered group took over a table in the lower level of the Gallery.

Levinson’s latest HBO project, “Paterno,” stars Pacino, while his previous HBO film, “The Wizard of Lies,” was with De Niro and “Scarface” star Michelle Pfeiffer.

Also there were De Niro’s wife, Grace, and Levinson’s wife, Dianna.

Hey @DailyMail-- I wasn't the moderator at the Scarface panel. I didn't ask that question. I wasn't even in the room. I was, originally, going to be the moderator, but it was changed the morning of.

I have interviewed hundreds of people on my podcast. There is zero chance I would have asked Michelle Pfeiffer that question. If you've ever listened to my pod, you know that.

1) And further, now that this is being falsely attributed to me, let me say this: I prepared really hard to do the panel and was really looking forward to it. But someone on here sent DePalma an old quote of mine, and he had me kicked off the panel the morning of the event.

2) I had said, 10 years ago, that he didn't deserve to be thought of in the same way Scorsese, Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg are. And when I was first asked to do the gig, I warned the people to get DePalma's approval. They did. And then, at the last minute, he booted me.

3) Well, I hope he's happy with the result. For the record, I think Scarface is a masterpiece. And that Pfeiffer's performance captured the mood of that place and moment in time better than almost anything or anyone ever. END.

btw, I never should have publicly said anything against DePalma's work 10 years back. I was tired at the end of a junket. It's wrong for any filmmaker to do that about another. I was looking forward to really making this night special for him, the cast and the audience.