Martin Short's co-star Annette O'Toole played Superman's love interest and then his mother… see her now at 73

Hollywood actress Annette O'Toole has packed a busy and varied career into the nearly six decades she has spent in showbiz. 

In 1983 she appeared as the title character's love interest Lana Lang in Superman III, starring Christopher Reeve during his iconic run as the Man of Steel. 

Her movies included a 1987 romantic comedy called Cross My Heart, starring her and Martin Short as two people on a third date trying to conceal certain home truths. 

Two decades later she returned to the Superman universe on the hit CW show Smallville - this time in a far different role than the one she held before.

Smallville featured Annette as Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of the hero's alter ego Clark Kent, who was played by Hollywood heartthrob Tom Welling.

Now 73 years old and starring on the smash Netflix series Virgin River, she cut a fashionable figure while dashing around Los Angeles this week.

Her willowy frame was draped in a flowing true blue jacket and a set of acid-wash jeans, teamed with a snappy set of brown leather boots. 

O'Toole wore her luxurious grey-tinged brown locks down, framing her luminous complexion as she set about her errands for the day. 

The Texas native at one point swept her jacket off amid the climbing California temperatures, revealing a stylish grey sweater worn underneath. 

Although she was born in Houston, she was living in Los Angeles with her family by the age of 13 - and two years later, she had made her TV debut with an appearance on the variety program The Danny Kaye Show.

In the 1970s, she featured on a variety of hit shows ranging from Gunsmoke to Hawaii Five-O to The Partridge Family, and also acted in the darkly comic TV movie The Girl Most Likely To... starring Stockard Channing and written by Joan Rivers.

That decade, she broke into the big screen with the beauty pageant satire Smile, playing one of the contestants in a cast that included Bruce Dern and Barbara Feldon.

However her most famous role came in 1983 when she played Lana Lang, the love interest of Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent in Superman III.

Although the third film in the series was not the hit its predecessors had been, O'Toole still earned a soft spot in fans' hearts for her performance as Lana.

She later described Christopher as 'fantastic' and 'so kind,' on the podcast Inside Of You hosted by her Smallville co-star Michael Rosenbaum. 

When she first came to the set 'Chris Reeve invited me to his home, and he had his wife or his girlfriend and two little darling children and we had children, and we had dinner, and he took me to see Simon and Garfunkel at Wembley Stadium,' she said.

'I didn’t know him at all, and that was just like his way – gave me food and tickets and stuff. And then we were shooting at Pinewood, and he took me down to the commissary and he said: "Start a tab for her here at the commissary,"' she recalled. 

'I never went again because, you know – I’d bring my cheese and crackers from home – but he couldn’t have been more generous and sweet,' shared O'Toole.

For weeks, she only filmed with him as Clark Kent, so that when she finally saw him in full Superman uniform she was left thunderstruck.

O'Toole confessed that in that moment she 'started to kind of like stutter and got chills, and there was Superman. It wasn’t Chris. He was in the whole gear. And talking about it now, I get chills thinking about it.'

Four years later her movie venture with Martin Short - the romantic comedy Cross My Heart - emerged as a stupendous box office flop.

However she harbored fond memories of working with Short, saying she 'would go home with my face aching because I had been laughing so hard,' on the podcast Really Famous hosted by therapist Kara Mayer Robinson.

As the 1990s rolled along, she earned another place in fantasy history by featuring in the famed miniseries of Stephen King's It as the adult version of Beverley Marsh, one of the people who encountered the demon clown Pennywise during her childhood.

During the same decade she earned an Emmy nod for playing John F. Kennedy's mother Rose on the ABC miniseries The Kennedys of Massachusetts.

Her triumphant return to the Superman world came in 2001 when she started starring on Smallville as Clark Kent's adoptive mother Martha.

She remained a series regular for the first six seasons, leaving once her contract was up and guesting sporadically on the show for the final two seasons.

'As time went on for the series, it was a little frustrating that there wasn’t more for Martha to do,' O'Toole admitted to the fan site the Daily Planet. 'I was kind of just doing the same scenes over and over again.'

During the 2000s and 2010s, she continued guesting on beloved TV shows including Law & Order, Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice.

Since 2019 she has been starring on Netflix' smash hit romantic Western series Virgin River as Hope McCrea, the mayor of the titular California town.

On the personal front, she has been married to Best in Show and This Is Spinal Tap star Michael McKean since 1999, and has two daughters by her first husband Bill Geisslinger, whom she was married to from 1983 to 1993.