Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress who starred in Hollywood classics such as On the Waterfront and North by Northwest, has died at the age of 102.
Saint won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her film debut in director Elia Kazan’s 1954 crime drama, On the Waterfront; playing Edie Doyle, the film’s moral compass and love interest to Marlon Brando’s conflicted boxer-turned-dockworker.
Five years later, she played femme fatale Eve Kendall, dangerously seducing Cary Grant’s entangled advertising executive in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller North by Northwest.
She died Tuesday of natural causes, surrounded by family and loved ones at her home in Los Angeles, family representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed.
Until her death, Saint was the oldest Oscar winner and one of the last stars of Hollywood’s golden age.
Beginning her career in live television in the late 1940s, she also won an Emmy Award in 1990 for her breakthrough role as wealthy widow Lil Van Degan Altemus on People Like Us.
The star photographed around 1960 (Getty Images)
Saint alongside Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront (20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)
Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1924, Saint initially planned to become a teacher before developing a passion for acting.
She trained in New York at the Herbert Berghof Studio then at the Actors Studio – cradle of method acting – co-founded by Kazan.
Saint burst onto the Hollywood scene with her sweet but resolute portrayal of Edie in Kazan’s classic, On the Waterfront.
His co-star Brando was an intense method actor and Saint admitted to finding him “adorable” but “a little scary”.
“I felt like he could see right through me,” she told Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in a 2013 interview.
The actress opposite Cary Grant in North by Northwest (above and below) (Photo by 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images)
She was, however, considered a surprise choice to play one of Hitchcock’s cool and calculating heroines in his masterpiece, North and Northwest.
The English filmmaker was known for being very demanding of his leading ladies.
“He worked with me from the outside,” Saint said.
“My hair, my makeup, my shoes, my jewelry, my purse, my gloves, everything. And just by creating that exterior for me, he made me feel like a spy.”
Saint also starred opposite Paul Newman in Otto Preminger’s Exodus in 1960, and alongside Warren Beatty in John Frankenheimer’s All Fall Down.
But she then scaled back her career while raising a family with her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden.
Eva Marie Saint (center) pictured with her co-stars at the 2006 premiere of Superman Returns in California (Getty Images)
Half a century later, Saint made a return to the big screen as Clark Kent’s adoptive mother in the 2006 hit film Superman Returns, when she was 80 years old.
And she went on to play roles in the supernatural fantasy Winter’s Tale, alongside Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, and the 2019 nun drama Mariette in Ecstasy.
This all followed her Emmy win in 1990 for her role in the television miniseries People Like Us, which was set in New York high society.
Saint, who has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in film and television, said her longevity in acting has given her work added depth.
“The longer you live, the smarter you become, because you’ve been there, you’ve seen things,” she told TCM.
“You have had different emotional experiences in your own life and I hope you understand things better.
“And it makes you a better actress.”
Saint’s marriage to Hayden lasted 65 years, until his death in 2016, and she is survived by their two children.
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