Kidder first stepped into the role in the 1978 movie, winning the Saturn Award for Best Actress in the process.
She then reprised the part in 1980, 1983 and 1987, also playing parts in several other projects such as 1979’s The Amityville Horror.
The now-68-year-old suffered a highly publicised nervous breakdown in 1996, after which her film and TV appearances started to wane – but she is now continuing to work very consistently.
For example, you may have seen her in recent years in Smallville, Brothers & Sisters or The L Word.
In 2015, she earned a very well-deserved Emmy Award for her performance in children’s TV series R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour; and according to IMDb she has two more films in the pipeline.
In an interview last year, she told Vulture Hound of her Superman casting: “I really wanted the part. It was frightening as all auditions are.
“I had my first audition then I flew from Montana, where I lived, to London to do a screen test.
“I went, ‘I gotta get this movie because your marriage is really bad but you don’t have the strength to get out. But if you get a big movie you can get out’, so there was that motivation.
“So then I went to the producers and started telling everyone in the room what needed to come across in the scene.
“I had to communicate that I am really in love with Superman no matter what.”