The news came from the Franzen-Davis funeral home in Livingston, Montana and was first reported by TMZ (but has since been confirmed by Deadline). It is unclear at the moment how she died, but how she lived was as an outspoken and larger than life figure who found a unique perch in 1970s and ‘80s pop culture. While the movie received mixed reviews, Kidder was constantly praised, including by the New York Times’ notoriously tough Janet Maslin who called Kidder “the life of the party” in that film and all her others. Maslin was also likely referring to the role Kidder is most famous for: Lois Lane. While not the first actress to play the intrepid Daily Planet reporter, Kidder is arguably the most iconic actor to embody the character. Her Lois was spunky, feisty, and all the other adjectives associated with female leads in that era, but she additionally was more defiantly her own person than many of the love interests who appeared in male-led superhero movies in the ensuing decades. Cocky, self-assured, and proud of her chain-smoking habit (and inability to spellcheck), she breathed some screwball humor into the film as well as an air of authentic newsroom brassiness. She also appears alongside Christopher Reeve in one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. Kidder again reprised the role of Lois Lane for a bigger part in 1980’s Superman II, however her outspoken support of director Richard Donner—who directed the first movie and part of the second film in 1977 and ’78 before being fired by producers Alexander Salkind and Ilya Salkind—cost her. “It was very hard watching him [Donner] go,” Kidder said. “Some of us made more of a fuss than others—me in particular—so you could tell the joy [of working together] in all our faces, in the first one in particular and half of the second one.” She’d go on to call the Salkinds “crooks.” Kidder would go on to have a larger role in Christopher Reeve and Cannon Films’ Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). Her career, however, slowed in the 1980s and included a variety of television movies, including a performance of Pygmalion with Peter O’Toole on Showtime in 1983. Her career further came to a halt after she suffered a nervous breakdown in 1996. As a woman who spent a lifetime grappling with Bipolar disorder, and after a computer with three years of drafts of her autobiography crashed, she had an episode… which caused the industry to shut its doors. Kidder became an American citizen in 2005 as well as an outspoken activist against the Iraq War. During her life, she was married three times, including to the late actor John Heard in 1979… for six days. She is survived by a daughter who was born in 1976 during her first marriage to Thomas McGuane, as well as two grandchildren. And as long as people watch superhero movies, she’ll continue to fly across the silver screen.