Eva Marie Saint, Oscar-Winning On the Waterfront Star, Dies at 102
Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress who starred opposite Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" and Cary Grant in "North by Northwest," has died. She was 102.
Saint died at her home in Los Angeles, according to multiple reports. She was one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, with a career that stretched across eight decades.
An Oscar for Her First Film
Born July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, Saint was raised by Quaker parents and graduated from Bowling Green State University in Ohio in 1946. A theater on the campus now bears her name.
She got her start in early live television and on Broadway, winning a Drama Critics Award in 1953 for "The Trip to Bountiful."
Her film debut came the next year in Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront." Playing Edie Doyle, the gentle love interest of Brando's dockworker Terry Malloy, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was paid just $7,500 for the role.
Saint later recalled that Kazan told her not to let Brando in the door during one scene. "I remained off balance for the whole shoot," she said.
She also remembered the unusual audition with Brando. "I don't know what happened, but… Brando came in the living room. We were dancing, we were laughing, I was crying," she said, according to La Voce di New York.
Hitchcock's Cool Blonde
Saint's most famous role may be Eve Kendall, the mysterious woman Cary Grant meets on a train in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 thriller "North by Northwest."
Hitchcock personally chose her costumes and worked to lower her voice for the part. The New York Times wrote at the time that the director had "plumbed some talents not shown by the actress heretofore."
Her other films from the era include "That Certain Feeling" with Bob Hope, "A Hatful of Rain," and "Raintree County" with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. She also worked with some of the top directors of the day, including Otto Preminger in "Exodus" and John Frankenheimer in "Grand Prix." In the 1960s, she appeared in "The Sandpiper" and the Cold War comedy "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming."
A Career That Never Stopped
Saint chose to limit her film work so she could focus on her family, but she never stopped acting. She returned to television in the 1970s and won an Emmy Award in 1990 for the miniseries "People Like Us."
TV audiences also saw her on "Moonlighting" as the mother of Cybill Shepherd's character, and on "Frasier."
Younger fans know her as Martha Kent in 2006's "Superman Returns." She also voiced Katara in the animated series "The Legend of Korra," earning a voice acting award in 2012. Her final theatrical film was "Winter's Tale" in 2014, and she kept working into her late 90s, including on a podcast series, ABC News Australia reported.
She was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for her film work and one for her work in television.
A Long Hollywood Love Story
Saint married television director Jeffrey Hayden in 1951. They were together for 65 years until his death in 2016, an unusually long marriage by Hollywood standards. The couple had two children.
When she turned 100 on July 4, 2024, Saint celebrated with four generations of her family.
She was the oldest living winner of an acting Oscar at the time of her death.
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