Just as Superman is a career-making role, winning the part of Lois Lane also provides an actress a major boost. Superman and Lois have become modern mythological characters, and the actors bringing them to life are faced with the near-impossible task of balancing paying homage to past portrayals of Metropolis’s main power couple, while also bringing something fresh and relevant to the roles. Lois is as old as Superman, also making her debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938, and she presented a new paradigm of leading lady as a hard-hitting, tenacious reporter, rather than a helpless damsel in distress. However, she’s still Superman’s main squeeze; therefore, any actress playing Lois is faced with delivering a precarious balance of her fierce independence and the character’s softer side, all while making her love for the hero believable and grounded.
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Five actresses have brought Lois to the big screen since her introduction nearly 100 years ago, and we’ve ranked their portrayals of the iconic Daily Planet journalist.
5) Kate Bosworth
Kate Bosworth made her name as an ingenue delighting audiences in teen romances like Blue Crush and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, so many of us were left scratching our heads when it was announced she’d be playing Lois in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns.
Though Bosworth certainly gave the role a valiant effort, she lacked the edge and grit to fully realize Lois in the film, especially as a version of the character who had Superman’s child but penned the article “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” To make matters worse, she lacked any meaningful chemistry with Brandon Routh’s Superman, which in turn made it all that much more difficult for moviegoers to root for the couple. To be fair, Bosworth has gone on to star in several more projects, and it seems her casting was merely one symptom of the misfire Superman Returns turned out to be.
4) Amy Adams
Amy Adams is a world-class actress, which is why it pains us that she ranks so low on our list. While Adams certainly didn’t lack the enthusiasm for the role, nor the pluck as the intrepid reporter, her portrayal of Lois didn’t quite click in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel and subsequent DC Films.
Adams’s Lois wasn’t given all that much to do, plus, the darker, moodier tone Zack Snyder’s films possessed caused any and all quippy banter at the Daily Planet offices to come off as incongruous and disjointed. Although both Adams and Henry Cavill do their best, their chemistry as Lois and Superman doesn’t work on screen either.
3) Noel Neill
Before she lit up the small screen opposite George Reeves in the iconic Adventures of Superman series, Noel Neill played Lois Lane in a series of films about the hero opposite Kirk Alyn. Noel Neill was the first actor to ever play Lois on screen, thus setting the tone for all her on-screen successors.
Even though she was often cast as the damsel in distress, it never came at the expense of Lois’s tenacity and capability. She was the first and one of the very best to balance Lois’s indefatigable ambition with her soft spot for the Man of Steel and set the standard for the character on screen.
2) Rachel Brosnahan
With so many depictions of Lois on the large and small screens in recent memory, Rachel Brosnahan had an incredibly high bar to clear when she was cast opposite David Corenswet in James Gunn’s Superman. However, critics and audiences agree that she passed with flying colors. Brosnahan succeeds in making Lois a contemporary, complex woman, knowing exactly when to lean into the character’s notorious relentlessness as well as when the let her vulnerability slip to the surface.
Her chemistry with Corenswet is palpable, however, she doesn’t pull any punches in her interview with Superman, perfectly walking the line between maintaining integrity and concern for the man she initially refuses to admit she loves.
1) Margot Kidder
Margot Kidder’s performance is synonymous with Lois Lane. Picking up the torch from Neill, Kidder managed to not only maintain Lois’s tenacity, but also endowed her with equal parts sex appeal and neuroses, making her take on the character the first time we saw a three-dimensional version of the character on screen. It’s her wit, her cynicism, her ambition, and her undeniable sparks with her co-star that have shaped our idea of Lois as moviegoers.
Ever since she charged into Perry White’s office in Richard Donner’s Superman and breezed right past Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent, Kidder has been the yardstick we’ve measured following Loises against.
Who is your favorite cinematic Lois Lane? Let us know in the comments below!
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Image Courtesy of DC Comics -
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
