Kara Zor-El has been played by several actresses on the big and small screens over the years, but Helen Slater was the first to don the iconic red and blue for the 1984 Supergirl movie, a role she landed when she was just 18-years-old.
During an interview with THR, Slater revealed that she underwent a rigorous 4-month training regimen that resulted in her gaining 15 pounds of muscle.
“I was very scrawny when I got the part,” she recalls. “The trampolining was wild. I learned to do backflips on the trampoline, and then there’s an aerial ballet in the Supergirl film, which we practiced quite a lot.”
Slater actually signed a three-film deal at the time, but the Tri-Star release proved to be a critical and commercial disaster, taking in just $14 million in the US. Helen did reprise the role for a brief cameo in The Flash, even though most people assumed that her scene with the late Christopher Reeve's Superman was completely CGI-generated.
Slater recalls her time working on the movie fondly, though she admits that she didn't really need to be on set to film the sequence that ended up in the final cut.
“I loved that movie The Flash. Ezra was so lovely and knew about my graduate work in mythology and wanted to talk about that. I was in this very wild machine with 600 eyes around it. But they could have just put a Barbie doll in because I’m de-aged so much. They were so kind to fly me out to London, but I don’t know that they needed to.”
Milly Alcock is currently taking flight as the Woman of Tomorrow in theaters, and Slater was full of praise for the movie and the House of the Dragon alum's performance.
“I loved the new Supergirl film. I thought Milly Alcock was astonishing — fierce, strong and great comic timing!”
“My understanding is that these myths should be changing,” she added. “We want reinterpretations. That keeps it alive and keeps it going. It echoes what’s happening in the culture right now. It’s fun that it evolves and keeps developing.”
Supergirl is not having a great time at the box office, so a direct sequel is highly unlikely. Alcock will be back as Kara in Man of Tomorrow, however, and she is also expected to appear in the next DCU movie (possibly Wonder Woman).
"When an unexpected and ruthless enemy threatens, Kara Zor-El is forced, against her will, to team up with an unlikely companion. Together, they embark on an epic cosmic journey where revenge and justice are at stake – and where Kara must confront her origins to find her own path as a hero. Alcock is joined by Matthias Schoenaerts, Eve Ridley, David Krumholtz, Emily Beecham and Jason Momoa in key roles. Peter Safran and James Gunn are producing the film for DC Studios."
Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow will also star Eve Ridley as Ruthye Mary Knolle, David Krumholtz and Emily Beecham as Kara's parents, Zor-El and Alura, and Matthias Schoenaerts as the villainous Krem of the Yellow Hills.
Our new Girl of Steel will take flight on June 26, 2026.
Said Gunn when the project was first announced: “In our series we see the difference between Superman who was sent to Earth and raised by loving parents from the time he was an infant, versus Supergirl who was raised on a rock, a chip off Krypton, and watched everyone around her die and be killed in terrible ways for the first 14 years of her life, and then came to Earth when she was a young girl. She’s much more hardcore, she’s not exactly the Supergirl we’re used to seeing.”