Eva Marie Saint, star of ‘On the Waterfront’ and ‘North by Northwest,’ dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar and Emmy-winning star best known for playing the grieving sister of a New Jersey dockworker in the Elia Kazan drama “On the Waterfront” and a stylish government agent in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest,” died Tuesday. She was 102 years old.

Sainte’s death was confirmed by her representative, Jeff Sanderson, who attributed it to natural causes and said she was “surrounded by family and loved ones.”

Saint was one of the last surviving luminaries of Hollywood’s Golden Age, revered by generations of moviegoers for the understated complexity of his most famous performances.

During a career that began in the early 1950s and spanned more than seven decades, Saint appeared in 20 feature films. She was a prolific performer on television, garnering five Emmy nominations and winning one for the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us.”

Saint collaborated with some of the most legendary artists and filmmakers of the classical era. She co-starred with Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck and Elizabeth Taylor in films by giants like Hitchcock, Kazan, Vincente Minnelli and Otto Preminger.

The entertainment industry changed dramatically during Saint’s life, but she persevered through each new chapter with a smile and a sense of humor, even appearing as Clark Kent’s adoptive mother in 2006’s “Superman Returns.”

“You know how to stay young? Go with the flow,” Saint told Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 2014.

Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924 in Newark, New Jersey. She began acting while a student at Bowling Green State University, graduating in 1946. She later launched her radio acting career in New York and took classes at the city’s famous Actors Studio.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Saint appeared in small-screen programs such as “Actors Studio” and “The Prudential Family Playhouse.” She won plaudits for her turn in a 1953 television version of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” starring Lillian Gish, a silent film icon.

Gish proved to be one of the key mentors in Saint’s young life. In an interview with TCM, Saint recalled what Gish used to say to young actors worried about their futures: “It’s today and tomorrow, and don’t be grumpy.”

In 1951, Saint married Jeffrey Hayden, who became a prolific television director and producer. (He died in 2016 at age 90.)

Saint’s big-screen breakthrough came when she was cast in Kazan’s “On the Waterfront,” now considered one of the landmarks of mid-century American drama.

She played Edie Doyle, the sister of a murdered Hoboken dockworker and the conflicted love interest of washed-up fighter Terry Malloy (“I Could Have Been a Suitor!”), played by Marlon Brando.

Brando, as she later recalled, seemed both “really sweet” and somewhat intimidating during the production of “Waterfront.” He possessed such intense acting talent, she told TCM, that “I felt he could see right through me.”

Sainte’s first feature film won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 1955 ceremony, two days before she gave birth to her first child. Frank Sinatra called her name and the visibly pregnant saint took the stage to deliver a brief acceptance speech.

“I could have the baby here,” she said, laughing. “But I’d like to thank Elia Kazan and Sam Spiegel, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Boris Kaufman, all the longshoremen. Thank you.”

The same year she won an Academy Award, Saint was nominated for an Emmy for her work in the television version of Paddy Chayefsky’s play “The Middle of the Night.” The following year, she received another Emmy nomination for her role in a television musical production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

Saint’s film career also flourished. She co-starred with Bob Hope in “That Certain Feeling,” nabbed a Golden Globe for her role in Fred Zinnemann’s addiction drama “A Hatful of Rain” and appeared alongside Montgomery Clift in Edward Dmytryk’s “Raintree County.”

But then came arguably the best-known role of Saint’s film career: Eve Kendell, a hard-nosed double agent who gets drawn into a convoluted spy plot and romance with a dashing Madison Avenue executive (Cary Grant) in “North by Northwest.”

Saint was asked to convey equal parts skill and vulnerability, seduction and fear. She achieved it with aplomb. In the film’s suspenseful climax, Eve attempts to fend off evil agents at the top of Mount Rushmore and nearly falls off the mountain.

In reality, she ran on a 30-foot recreation of Mount Rushmore on a soundstage in Culver City, California. However, the action set piece wasn’t exactly easy to shoot.

“I had just given birth to our second child two weeks before,” Saint recalled in a 2000 interview with The Oklahoman. “So there I was, climbing. I was like, Oh my God, I’m not afraid of heights, but I’m not climbing mountains.”

But then she realized she “wasn’t nervous and Cary was older than me, and I thought, Oh, if he can do it, I can do it,” she told the newspaper.

In the years that followed, Saint dabbled in different genres, from historical epic (Preminger’s “The Exodus”) to domestic melodrama (Minnelli’s “The Sandpiper”) to a memorable Cold War comedy (“The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!”).

In the 1970s, Saint reduced her film commitments and began appearing more frequently in TV movies and intimate miniseries, including “The First Female President” and “Fatal Vision.”

In an interview with The Associated Press published in 2014, Saint said she continued to relish the challenge of acting, but envied the high-profile roles given to veteran British performers such as Judi Dench and Maggie Smith.

“We don’t really have that attitude in Hollywood,” she said. “You get to a certain age and you’re so proud to be walking and breathing and loving and working and all that at 90.”

Saint’s last big screen credit was in the 2014 fantasy romance “Winter’s Tale,” starring Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay, from “Downton Abbey.” Saint recalled that Farrell gave her five dozen roses on the last day of filming.

Saint is survived by his two children, Darrell and Laurette; four grandchildren, Eli, Tyler, Molly and Stella; and two great-grandchildren, Arlo and Finley.