Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress whose career spanned the Golden Age of Hollywood and into the 21st century, has died at the age of 102. She passed away of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday, according to a family representative.
Saint was celebrated for her film debut in Elia Kazan's 1954 drama On the Waterfront, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She also became an indelible part of cinematic history as the enigmatic Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 thriller North by Northwest, opposite Cary Grant.
From Newark to the silver screen
Born on 4 July 1924 in Newark, New Jersey, Saint studied acting at Bowling Green State University in Ohio before starting her career in television, appearing in game shows and commercials. Her transition to film was swift and triumphant when Kazan cast her alongside Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. The film received 12 Academy Award nominations and won eight, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Brando.
Following her auspicious start, Saint took on a variety of roles: a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1955) with Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra; That Certain Feeling (1956) with Bob Hope; Raintree County (1957) opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift; and A Hatful of Rain (1957), a pioneering drama about drug addiction that earned her Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.
Her career-defining role came in 1959 with North by Northwest, where she played Eve Kendall, a femme fatale and undercover agent entangled with James Mason's villain and Cary Grant's mistaken-identity hero. The film was a major hit and cemented her stardom, yet Saint chose to limit her film work to focus on family life with her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, whom she married in 1951. The couple had two children.
Still, she continued to deliver memorable performances in films such as Exodus (1960) with Paul Newman, All Fall Down (1962) with Warren Beatty and Angela Lansbury, John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix (1966), and the satirical comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966).
In the 1970s and 1980s, Saint returned to television, earning Emmy nominations for the miniseries How The West Was Won (1977) and Taxi!!! (1978). She also played the mother of Cybill Shepherd's character in Moonlighting and the mother of Peri Gilpin's Roz Doyle in Frasier.
Later in her career, she portrayed Superman's mother Martha Kent in Superman Returns (2006) and made her final film appearance in Winter's Tale (2014), starring Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, and Will Smith. In 2021, she lent her voice to an audio play, The Bus Ride, part of The Pack Podcast.
Saint's death marks the end of an era for Hollywood's Golden Age, but her legacy lives on through her iconic performances. She is survived by her two children, Darrell and Laurette, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Her husband Jeffrey Hayden died in 2016.
