Margot Kidder Found Dazed Police Doubt Actress’ Claim That Someone Was Trying To Kill Her

Actress Margot Kidder was found cowering in a suburban California back yard Wednesday, filthy, dazed, penniless - and insisting someone was trying to kill her.

Kidder, best known as the tough-talking Lois Lane in the “Superman” movies, told police she had chopped off her hair with a razor and swapped clothes with a homeless man in Los Angeles to disguise herself from her pursuers.

She claimed to have been assaulted and said she’d spent two days crouched in the bushes in the affluent Glendale neighborhood.

But police said there was no sign of foul play. Kidder was admitted to a Los Angeles hospital for psychiatric tests.

“We do not feel there has been a crime at this time. She claimed that she was followed and assaulted, but we found no evidence of that,” said Glendale Police Sgt. Rick Young.

Doctors at Olive View Medical Center said she showed no sign of drug or alcohol abuse.

Kidder, 47, was last seen at Los Angeles International Airport Saturday night, waiting for a flight to Phoenix.

A police source said Kidder called up a male friend Saturday and asked to be taken to the Delta terminal. On the way, she said, “people were after her.”

The friend dropped her off at 10 p.m. and drove away. At 3 a.m., Kidder approached a television crew from Tennessee arriving in Los Angeles to cover the Country Music Awards. Anchorman Ted Hall said Kidder was hysterical and begged for their protection.

Hall said Kidder would occasionally point at people and yell: “I see your beeper! You’ve been watching me all night!”

Kidder followed the TV crew on an airport shuttle bus to the Hertz rental car counter, passing frantic notes. One, scribbled on her boarding pass, read: “Will you take my jacket a few miles and then throw it away for me?”

Hall said the Hertz workers called a cab for Kidder and she left without saying where she was going. Her last note to them read simply: “I am dead.”

When she did not arrive at the acting class she was to teach Monday in Thatcher, Ariz., she was reported missing by her manager, John Blake.

“Superman” co-star Christopher Reeve said, “my heart goes out to her” and vowed to provide any help he could.

“If there is anything I can do, I will,” Reeve said. “She is a dear friend who has always been there for me, and I would do anything to help her.”

The actress - who has been dogged with legal, medical, financial and career problems - was clearly terrified when found Wednesday.

Two of her front teeth appeared to have been knocked out, but police said she had lost a dental bridge.

The dark-haired, whiskey-voiced actress did not live in the affluent neighborhood and didn’t know anyone who did, police said. They don’t know how she got there.

The Canadian actress, whose life appeared to be rebounding after a 1990 car accident put her in a wheelchair for two years, had been living in Livingstone, Mont. for the last few months.

Livingstone residents said Kidder lived in a small house in town - a far cry from the fancy nearby ranches owned by movie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Keaton and Brooke Shields.

“She looked like hell. I don’t think I would have recognized her if she didn’t say her name in that voice,” said Gina McCann, who works at the Firehall Fitness Center, where Kidder recently took out a membership.

“Her eyes had real dark circles under them, and she looked real haggard and real old. People off the street looked better than she did,” McCann said.

Kidder hit the skids in 1990 after she hurt her neck in a 1961 Rambler convertible on the set of a never-made TV series, “Nancy Drew.” Surgery at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center cured her spinal problems, but she went into bankruptcy when the insurance company refused to pay her bills.

She told interviewers in 1992 she was addicted to painkillers.