Territories, the daughter of Jocelyn Mary "Jill" (née Wilson), a history teacher, and Kendall Kidder, an explosives expert and engineer. Kidder was born in Yellowknife because of her father's employment, which required the family to live in remote locations. Her father subsequently served as the manager of the Yellowknife Telephone Company from 1948 to 1951. Her mother was Canadian, from British Columbia, while her father was an American, from New Mexico. She was of Welsh and English descent. She had one sister, Annie, who is a Canadian actress and executive director of the People for Education charity, and three brothers: John, Michael and Peter. Two of her siblings married notable Canadians: Annie marrying actor Eric Peterson, and John, politician Elizabeth May. Kidder's niece Janet Kidder is also an actress. Recalling her childhood in northern Canada, Kidder said: "We didn't have movies in this little mining town. When I was 12 my mom took me to New York and I saw Bye Bye Birdie, with people singing and dancing, and that was it. I knew I had to go far away. I was clueless, but I [have done] okay." In addition to Yellowknife, she also spent some time growing up in Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador. Kidder became interested in politics from a young age, which she credited to debates her parents would have over the dinner table; her mother had socialist leanings, while her father was a conservative Republican. Kidder had mental health issues from a young age, which stemmed from undiagnosed bipolar disorder. "I knew I was different, had these mind flights that other people didn't seem to have," she recalled. At age 14, she attempted suicide. Kidder found an outlet in acting as she felt she could "let my real self out... and no one would know it was me." "Nobody ever encouraged me to be an actress," she recalled. "It was taken as a joke ... As a teenager, I envisioned myself in every book I read. I wanted to be Henry Miller and Thomas Wolfe. I wanted to eat everything on the world's platter, but my eyes were bigger than my stomach." She attended multiple schools during her youth through her family's relocations, eventually graduating from Havergal College, a boarding school in Toronto, in 1966. In 1966, she found herself pregnant by her boyfriend, who arranged for an illegal abortion. The abortionist was located in a