The Superman Curse

A “cursed film” is one whose actors met a bad end before, during or after filming.

This is the case with the Superman films, apparently all cursed, so much so that some have speculated about a possible “Superman curse”. It is even said that some agents struggled to find actors willing to wear the red cape because of this reputation.

Superman actors who lost their lives

Kirk Alyn played the superhero in two low-budget serials in the 1940s, but then struggled to find other roles precisely because the public associated him with Superman. His later work was only voice roles, commercials and small uncredited parts; in 1978 he had a cameo as Lois Lane’s father in the Christopher Reeve film. He later developed Alzheimer’s and died in 1999, aged 88.

Bud Collyer voiced the superhero in the cartoons from 1941 to 1943. He then pursued a TV career and returned to voice Superman in 1966. Three years later he died, aged 61, of a circulatory problem.

Lee Quigley played the infant Superman in the 1978 film. He came from a troubled home, was bullied at school, and died in 1991, at just 14, from inhalant abuse.

George Reeves played Superman in the 1951 film “Superman and the Mole Men” and in the following TV series “Adventures of Superman” (1952-1958). He too could not find other roles because of his strong association with the character. On 16 June 1959 he was found dead at his home, a few days before his wedding, with a gunshot wound. His death was ruled a suicide, but there are other theories: his fingerprints were never found on the gun, and Reeves had had an affair with the wife of Eddie Mannix, a powerful MGM executive. It was his death that started the theory of the “curse”.

Christopher Reeve played the superhero in four films, from 1978 to 1987. He too became identified with the character, and is perhaps the actor most recognised in the role. On 27 May 1995 he had a riding accident during a competition that left him paralysed from the neck down. From then on he became the face of spinal cord injury research, and he died on 10 October 2004, aged 52, from complications related to his condition.

Other victims

Marlon Brando played Jor-El in the 1978 film, and is counted among the curse’s victims because of his family’s tragedies: in 1990 his son Christian shot the boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne, and was sentenced to five years in prison. That began Brando’s spiral of depression, which culminated when, in 1995, his daughter took her own life. Brando died in July 2004, three months before Christopher Reeve.

Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane, suffered from severe bipolar disorder, and in April 1996 she went missing for several days. She was found by police in a confused state. Margot was one of many who dismissed the curse, calling it newspaper-created rubbish and saying people should talk instead about the “luck of Superman”, since she had survived a serious car crash. Sadly she died on 13 May 2018, aged 69, and the coroner ruled that she had taken her own life.

Richard Pryor played Gus Gorman in Superman III. He had drug problems that almost killed him. Three years after the film he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and he died of a heart attack on 10 December 2005.

Dana Reeve, Christopher Reeve’s widow, died in 2006 of lung cancer, aged just 44, despite never having smoked.

Gene Hackman, Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve films, is also often added to the list of “victims”: he died in February 2025 at his Santa Fe home a few days after his wife, in circumstances that at first seemed mysterious: she had died of a hantavirus infection, he of cardiac arrest worsened by Alzheimer’s.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

Jerry and Joe are the artists who created Superman.

They sold the rights to the character to DC Comics for a pittance and, despite many efforts, never managed to get a share of DC’s profits.

In the 1950s Joe’s eyesight worsened to the point that he could no longer draw, and he became a delivery man to earn a living. Jerry Robinson, DC Comics artist and co-creator of the Joker, says that one day Shuster delivered a package to DC itself, embarrassing the staff.

He was given 100 dollars and told to buy himself a new coat and find another job.

By 1976 Shuster was almost blind and living in a California nursing home. In 1975 his partner Siegel had launched a public campaign against DC Comics, denouncing the way they had been treated. Faced with the bad publicity and the upcoming Superman film, Warner, which owned DC, agreed to restore their names on the comics and give both a lifetime pension of 20,000 dollars a year, plus health benefits. Shuster died in 1992 and Siegel in 1996.

The curse today

During the making of the Superman Returns DVD, in 2006, 3 people were involved in accidents: one fell down a flight of stairs, another was mugged and beaten, and the third crashed into a glass window. Director Bryan Singer joked that the DVD crew had “absorbed the curse” for everyone else.

Kate Bosworth played Lois Lane in Superman Returns and, although she was not hurt, her relationship with Orlando Bloom ended in 2006, and some blamed the curse.

The Smallville series also made the list: in 2018 actress Allison Mack, who played Chloe Sullivan, was arrested in the NXIVM cult case, and in 2021 she was sentenced to three years in prison.

More recent actors, from Dean Cain to Henry Cavill to David Corenswet, star of James Gunn’s Superman released in 2025, seem instead to have escaped the curse. After all, the simplest explanation is also the most likely: over decades of films, series and cartoons, with hundreds of people involved, some misfortune would have happened anyway.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Superman curse
• Wikipedia, George Reeves
• Wikipedia, Christopher Reeve