Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#22857
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Margot Kidder represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 46 years in, and Margot is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Margot Kidder appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Margot. Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, screen presence. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, family, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Richard Donner, Sidney J. Furie, Richard Lester and others, Margot Kidder helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed (2019) as Delilah Higgins · Superman (1978) as Lois Lane · Maverick (1994) as Margret Mary (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #22857 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1973–2019
Career length
46 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed
Most frequent director
Richard Donner
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Richard Donner
Most common genre
Action
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 53m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.8
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2010s
7.3 average MV
The 2010s are where the work and the material meet. Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2010s
7.3
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2010s
7.3
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Amityville Horror, Superman, Black Christmas.
Most productive era
1970s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2010s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | — | 6.91 film | — |
| Action | 7.21 film | 5.93 films | 6.91 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.61 film | — | — | — |
| Comedy | — | 5.81 film | 6.91 film | — |
| Crime | 6.81 film | — | — | — |
| Romance | — | — | — | 7.31 film |
| Horror | 6.63 films | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1973Sisters
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Danielle Breton / Dominique Blanchion.
Career peak
1978Superman
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
2019Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Delilah Higgins.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
9 of 9 films
as Lois Lane
Directed by Richard Donner
as Danielle Breton / Dominique Blanchion
Directed by Brian De Palma
as Lois Lane
Directed by Richard Lester
as Barb
Directed by Bob Clark
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Lois Lane
Superman (1978)
Performance score7.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Lois Lane gives Margot Kidder a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Delilah Higgins
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed (2019)
Performance score7.4
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Delilah Higgins is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Danielle Breton / Dominique Blanchion
Sisters (1973)
Performance score7.3
Sisters asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Danielle Breton / Dominique Blanchion is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lois Lane
Superman II (1980)
Performance score7.2
Superman II asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lois Lane is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Lois Lane
Start here. Superman is the clearest statement of what Margot Kidder does — accessible, 144 minutes, and rated 7.2 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Margot at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Sisters (1973)
A deliberate change of key after Superman — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Black Christmas (1974)
Keeps the mystery register of Sisters but asks for a colder reading of it.
Superman II (1980)
A deliberate change of key after Black Christmas — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed (2019)
A deliberate change of key after Superman II — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Richard Lester
Director
2 films together
Notably Superman II
Richard Donner
Director
2 films together
Notably Superman
Brian De Palma
Director
1 film together
Notably Sisters
Bob Clark
Director
1 film together
Notably Black Christmas
Stuart Rosenberg
Director
1 film together
Notably The Amityville Horror
Sidney J. Furie
Director
1 film together
Notably Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Richard Donner
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
SupermanRichard Lester
Director
2 films together · 6.3 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Superman IIBob Clark
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Black ChristmasBrian De Palma
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
SistersStuart Rosenberg
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Amityville HorrorSidney J. Furie
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Superman IV: The Quest for PeaceSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Superman
as Lois Lane
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed
as Delilah Higgins
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Superman
as Lois Lane
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Maverick
as Margret Mary (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Superman
as Lois Lane
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Margot Kidder has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
46 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Action Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in action, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Black Christmas
as Barb
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Black Christmas
as Barb
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Puppy Swap: Love Unleashed
as Delilah Higgins
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Sisters
as Danielle Breton / Dominique Blanchion
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Superman
as Lois Lane
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Maverick
as Margret Mary (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Maverick
as Margret Mary (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
as Lois Lane
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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