The Many Faces of Lois Lane – 2021 Edition

There are two things in this world that can make Superman weak in the knees. One is a green, glowing rock that just happens to be a radioactive chunk of his demolished home planet. The other is a feisty reporter with a nose for news and the initials L.L. For years, Clark Kent has tried to balance the fact that Superman belongs to the world with his desire to live a normal life with the woman of his dreams, Lois Lane.

Lois was around from the very beginning – her first comic book appearance was the same as Superman’s. Miss Lane and the Man of Steel both made their debut in Action Comics #1 in June of 1938. Clark seemed to have a thing for Lois right away. He asked her on a date in that first issue!

The first time that Lois was given life on screen it was in animated form, in the cartoon shorts that were originated by the Fleischer brothers in the early 1940s. The voices of both Lois Lane and Superman in these shorts were already familiar to audiences – Joan Alexander and Bud Collyer also voiced the characters on the popular radio show “The Adventures of Superman.”

Audiences got their first two live-action Lois Lanes in a relatively short span of time. Noel Neill first played Lois in the Superman movie serials from 1948 to 1950, which starred Kirk Alyn. In 1951, George Reeves made his debut as Superman in “Superman and the Mole Men.” Here, Lois was played by Phyllis Coates. Phyllis continued the role for the first season of the “Adventures of Superman” TV series. After the inaugural season, Ms. Coates opted not to return, and Ms. Neill returned to the role of Lois for the remainder of the series.

Coates and Neill offered very different portrayals of the Lois Lane character. The Phyllis Coates Lois was a much more hard-edged, no-nonsense reporter, and one of the very few versions who didn’t fall head over heels for the Man of Steel. When Neill resumed the role in 1953, her version of Lois was a much gentler one, who developed a friendship with Clark Kent and an attraction to our hero in blue.

Not only did Neill star alongside both Alyn and Reeves, but she also made a cameo appearance in the 1978 “Superman” movie (she and Alyn played Lois Lane’s parents), an appearance on the “Superboy” TV series, and she had a small role in the movie “Superman Returns.” Phyllis Coates also got a chance to return to the Superman mythos when she appeared on “Lois and Clark” in 1994, playing Lois’s mother in the episode “House of Luthor.”

Next, Superman and Lois would get animated again, and Joan Alexander would return to the role that she’d played two decades earlier! Joan Alexander and Bud Collyer again voiced Lois and Clark during the 1966-1970 “New Adventures of Superman” series, as well as the 1967-68 “Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure.” Though Alexander was the primary Lois, Julie Bennett, the voice of Wonder Girl, stepped in as Lois on some episodes.

Then came the first big screen “Superman” movie in 1978, with Margot Kidder taking on the role of Lois Lane. Ms. Kidder seemed to combine the confident, no-nonsense reporter of Phyllis Coates with the swooning, doe-eyed girl of Noel Neill and make that combination somehow seem natural. Ms. Kidder was far from the only actress considered for the part. DVD and Blu-ray extras show screen tests of several other actresses who tried out, including Anne Archer, Deborah Raffin, Susan Blakely, Stockard Channing, and Lesley Ann Warren. (Ms. Warren did play Lois in a 1975 TV adaptation of the 1966 Broadway musical “It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman”!) Christopher Reeve’s screen test is also included, with Holly Palance stepping in opposite him as Lois.

Kidder then returned for “Superman II” in 1980. This time out, Lois learned that Superman and Clark Kent were one and the same, and the two finally got together… at least until the end of the film, when Lois’s memory of the entire ordeal was erased with an amnesia-inducing super-kiss. An alternate cut of the film by its original director, Richard Donner, was released in 2006, and included a variation on the moment Lois discovers Clark’s secret; in a scene recreated from Reeve and Kidder’s screen tests, Lois Lane shoots Clark Kent to confirm that he’s invulnerable! (Clark doesn’t immediately realize the bullet was a blank.)

After a falling out with the producers, Kidder’s role in “Superman III” was dramatically reduced. Her screen time for the third installment is only about five minutes, while Annette O’Toole’s Lana Lang becomes Clark’s primary love interest for the film. By the time “Superman IV” came around in 1987, Kidder’s part was larger again, but she had to compete with Mariel Hemingway for Superman’s attention.

Ms. Kidder is yet another Lois Lane who returned for later installments of the Superman legend. The fourth season of “Smallville” featured two appearances by Kidder as Dr. Bridgette Crosby, emissary to Christopher Reeve’s Dr. Virgil Swann.

Lois made surprisingly few appearances on the many animated incarnations of “Super Friends” that aired throughout the 1970s and 80s, probably because the show tended to focus much more on superheroics than secret identities. She was voiced by Shannon Farnon, Mary McDonald Lewis, and Edna Mayo at various points throughout these shows. (Mary McDonald Lewis sounded quite a lot like Margot Kidder, which may have been a factor in her casting.)

When the Ruby Spears “Superman” cartoon came out in 1988, Lois’s voice was provided by Ginny McSwain. Ms. McSwain would go on to become the voice director for animated shows like “Spirit Riding Free,” “Transformers: Rescue Bots,” and “VeggieTales.”

The next to take on the role was Teri Hatcher, who played Lois on “Lois & Clark” from 1993-97. This series emphasized the romance between Lois Lane and Clark Kent, with super-heroics taking a backseat to “will they or won’t they?,” at least for the first couple of seasons. Lois eventually falls for the farmboy and not just the hero in blue, and by the start of season three she’s in on the secret. During the show’s run, Teri received the honor of being the most downloaded woman on the internet, due in large part to a picture of her wrapped up in Superman’s cape and nothing else. Teri would go on to make guest appearances on “Smallville” (a brief cameo as the mother of Erica Durance’s Lois), and “Supergirl” (as Rhea, the mother of Mon-El).

In 1996, Dana Delany voiced Lois for “Superman: The Animated Series.” No stranger to cartoon superheroes, Delany had voiced Andrea Beaumont, Bruce Wayne’s long-lost love, in “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm” just three years earlier. Ms. Delany continued to voice Lois throughout multiple appearances on Cartoon Network’s “Justice League” series. (Ms. Delany doesn’t hold the only voice credit for Lois for “S:TAS.” Mae Whitman provided the voice of a young Lois in a flashback scene, in the episode “Monkey Fun.”)

With the premiere of the fourth season of “Smallville” in 2004, Erica Durance made her first appearance as Lois Lane. (This mostly put to rest internet speculation that Allison Mack’s Chloe Sullivan would somehow evolve into the character, either via a penname or new witness-protection identity.) Originally scheduled to make only a handful of guest-appearances, Ms. Durance’s Lois proved popular enough with the fans that her role was expanded – first to 13 episodes, and then eventually to series regular. In an interesting twist, Lois is “in on the secret” before Clark actually becomes Superman, and in fact actually assists him in developing his mild-mannered secret identity throughout season 10. And yes, Erica Durance has also continued the tradition of returning to the world of heroes and capes in a “torch-passing” role: she has played Allura, Supergirl’s mother, in several episodes of the CW’s “Supergirl” beginning in season three.

In 2006, Superman flew back to the screen in “Superman Returns,” Bryan Singer’s love letter to the Christopher Reeve films. Here, Kate Bosworth portrayed a Lois Lane who had seemingly moved on from Superman after his five-year absence from Earth; Superman came back to find that Lois was engaged to another man, and that she had a child. (Spoiler alert: The kid is actually Superman’s, a controversial plot-twist that left fans divided.)

Starting in 2007, Warner Brothers began releasing a series of direct-to-video animated films based on the characters and storylines of DC Comics. Naturally, many of them are Superman stories, and include Lois Lane in some way, shape, or form.
-Anne Heche voiced Lois in 2007’s “Superman: Doomsday,” which was the studio’s first attempt at adapting the legendary Death of Superman storyarc from the comics.
-Kyra Sedgwick lent her voice to Lois in 2008’s “Justice League: The New Frontier,” adapted from Darwyn Cooke’s renowned mini-series.
-Christina Hendricks played Lois in the 2011 release of “All-Star Superman,” based on Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s mini-series of the same name.
-Grey DeLisle was the voice of Lois in 2012’s “Justice League: Doom,” a loose adaptation of Mark Waid’s “Tower of Babel” from the JLA comic books.
-Pauley Perrette provided Lois’s voice in 2012’s “Superman vs. The Elite,” an adaptation of Joe Kelly’s story “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and The American Way?” from Action Comics #775.
-Stana Katic was the voice of Lois in 2013’s “Superman: Unbound,” which adapted a Brainiac story by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. (This film also featured Katic’s “Castle” co-star, Molly Quinn, as the voice of Supergirl.)
-Dana Delaney once again lent her voice to the role of Lois Lane for 2013’s “Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox,” which was an adaptation of the “Flashpoint” mini-series.
-Paget Brewster was the voice of Lois for 2015’s “Justice League: Gods and Monsters,” an original story about a decidedly darker version of the classic DCU characters.
-Rebecca Romijn voiced Lois in 2018’s “The Death of Superman,” the second animated adaptation of the titular comic book story. She reprised the role for 2019’s follow-up, “Reign of the Supermen,” as well as for Lois’s appearance in “Batman: Hush” the same year, and “Justice League Dark: Apokolips War” in 2020.
-Amy Acker was the voice of Lois in 2020’s “Superman: Red Son,” an adaptation of Mark Millar’s mini-series about a Superman who landed in Russia instead of Kansas.
-Alexandra Daddario provided the voice of Lois in 2020’s “Superman: Man of Tomorrow,” a retelling of the early years of Superman’s adventures.

In 2013, Amy Adams portrayed Lois in the movie “Man of Steel.” In this version more than any other we got to see what an intrepid reporter Lois Lane truly is, as she tracked down Clark Kent and uncovered his secret before he ever even made a public appearance in the tights and cape. In an interview with the New York Daily News, Amy Adams revealed that this was not the first time she’d auditioned for the part of Lois. She also tried out for the role for “Superman: Flyby” (Brett Ratner’s Superman movie that never came to fruition) and “Superman Returns.” At the time that “Man of Steel” came out, Amy Adams was arguably best known for her role as live-action Disney princess Giselle in the movie “Enchanted,” but hardcore Superman fans may have recognized her from something else: she played fat-sucking meteor freak Jodi Melville in an early episode of “Smallville!” (Not something that this Academy Award nominee likely touts on her resume.) Ms. Adams reprised the role of Lois for 2016’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and 2017’s “Justice League.” We will undoubtedly get to see much more of her portrayal of Lois when Zack Snyder’s four-hour cut of “Justice League” is released on HBO Max in March 2021.

In early 2018, plans were announced for a “Metropolis” series that would have centered largely around a pre-Superman-era Lois Lane and Lex Luthor, which would have premiered on the DC Universe streaming service. The series never came to fruition, and never even got as far as the casting stage.

Speaking of the DC Universe, Lois made an appearance on the animated “Harley Quinn” series on the streaming service – voiced by Natalie Morales.

The CW series “Supergirl” had made occasional references to Lois Lane throughout its first few seasons, but it was not until the Arrowverse “Elseworlds” crossover event in December 2018 that she finally made her first appearance there. Elizabeth Tulloch (who often goes by Bitsie Tulloch), known for her role on the TV series “Grimm,” became the latest actress to bring Lois Lane to life on television. Promotional images of Bitsie’s Lois and Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman in the Fortress of Solitude gave off a strong “Superman II” vibe.

Bitsie’s Lois appeared again in the following year’s crossover event, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Since it brought together heroes from across the multiverse, this event allowed Bitsie the opportunity to share the screen with multiple Supermen. She shared a great scene with Brandon Routh talking about hope, and a quick moment with Tom Welling where she compares him to “the buff guy on the paper towel rolls.” We also saw Erica Durance briefly reprise her role as Lois Lane in the crossover as well, in addition to playing Allura.

Fans will soon get to see more of Bitsie’s Lois on a weekly basis, as she, along with Tyler Hoechlin’s Clark, star in their own series, “Superman and Lois,” premiering on the CW on February 23rd. The series will explore something that has only been seen or teased in small doses throughout the long legacy of these characters – Clark and Lois as parents. The show centers around the super-couple raising two boys, Jonathan and Jordan, in Clark’s hometown of Smallville, Kansas.

In September of 2018, Bitsie Tulloch posted on Instagram an image of her casting announcement, accompanied by a long, heartfelt caption describing how much the role of Lois Lane means to her. “As far back as 1938 when she first appeared in Action Comics #1, Lois Lane has defied and subverted society’s expectations of how women should behave,” Bitsie wrote. “She was portrayed as opinionated, inquisitive, and an unapologetically badass career woman at a time when many representations of women leaned more towards meek and demure. One of the reasons the character has remained so compelling for the last 80 years is that she has all these formidable, strong-willed qualities, but she’s also vulnerable, romantic, and feminine. A truly modern woman.” Certainly, Ms. Tulloch hit the nail on the head with that description of why Lois has captured the hearts of readers, movie-goers, and even the Man of Steel himself. Even though Superman can stop bullets and leap tall buildings, it’s Lois who has proven to be the greatest adventure for our hero. Right from the start, she caught the attention of one of the most powerful men in the universe, and he’s been flying after her ever since. No matter who has stepped into the role over the years, there has always been one enduring and endearing quality about Lois Lane… she is the one who gives Superman his humanity, because his dream for a normal life as Clark Kent only makes sense with her by his side.