Eva Marie Saint, Oscar Winner for ‘On the Waterfront,’ Dies at 102

LOS ANGELES — Eva Marie Saint, whose film debut opposite Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront” earned her an Academy Award and whose cool, knowing Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” made her one of the defining faces of Hollywood’s golden age, died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 102.

Family representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed to CNN and USA Today that Saint died of natural causes, “surrounded by family and loved ones.” After Olivia de Havilland’s death in July 2020, Saint held the title of the oldest living Oscar-winning actor, USA Today noted — one of the last living links to the era when the studio system still ruled Hollywood.

Saint was born July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, to Quaker parents, and first set her sights on becoming a teacher, according to USA Today. That plan changed when she won the leading role in a play while studying at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. After graduating, she moved to Manhattan, where she worked her way up through live television — including the NBC show “Campus Hoopla” in 1946 — and the New York stage. Her mentor, as Reuters recounted, was the great silent-film actress Lillian Gish, who appeared with her in the 1953 Broadway production of “The Trip to Bountiful.” The performance earned Saint a Theatre World Award and brought her to the attention of director Elia Kazan, who chose her for “On the Waterfront” over Elizabeth Montgomery.

The result was one of the most spectacular debuts in Hollywood history. Saint played Edie Doyle, the innocent but strong-willed young woman who sees more good in Brando’s tormented Terry Malloy than he sees in himself, in Kazan’s gritty 1954 drama about corruption on the New York waterfront. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the performance — her very first film role. Her first trip to the Academy Awards was memorable in its own right: heavily pregnant, she accepted her Oscar from Frank Sinatra and, according to the Associated Press, smilingly murmured a unique winner’s speech: “I think I may have the baby right here.” Her son, Darrell, was born two days later. The film itself won eight Academy Awards, including best picture.

The award made her an instant star, but Saint astonished Hollywood with a firm independence that would mark her entire career. She refused offers of studio contracts and declined chances to capitalize on her great success, explaining that she was taking time off to become acquainted with her new son, the Associated Press wrote. In her first decade in Hollywood she appeared in a mere seven films, turning down top-level productions including “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” with Gregory Peck and “The Rainmaker” with Burt Lancaster. USA Today noted that as her star was rising, she made the surprising decision to step back from the spotlight to focus on raising her family, limiting herself to about a film a year.

It was her husband, television and stage director Jeffrey Hayden, whom she credited with steering her toward the role that became her signature. Saint told Vanity Fair in 2014 that Hayden urged her to find a quiet spot, reread the script for Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” and think hard about it — advice she later said was exactly right. In the 1959 thriller she played Eve Kendall, the cool double agent tasked with seducing Cary Grant who ends up falling for him — a performance CNN called her most memorable role. In a 2014 interview she recalled that Hitchcock never discussed emotion with her, but told her to lower her voice and, in her scenes with Grant, to look directly into his eyes — “which was not difficult,” she said.

The films that followed paired her with a procession of the era’s great directors and stars, as Reuters detailed: Otto Preminger hired her for “Exodus” (1960) with Paul Newman; John Frankenheimer directed her in “All Fall Down” (1962) with Warren Beatty and “Grand Prix” (1966) with James Garner; Vincente Minnelli directed her in “The Sandpiper” (1965) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; and Norman Jewison cast her in the Cold War satire The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966). Television and the stage became her focus in the decades that followed: she earned Emmy nominations for the 1977 miniseries “How the West Was Won” and the 1978 TV movie “Taxi,” played Cybill Shepherd’s mother on “Moonlighting” from 1986 to 1988, and won the Primetime Emmy for the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us.” A new century brought her to a new audience entirely — as Martha Kent in 2006’s “Superman Returns” and as the voice of the elderly Katara on Nickelodeon’s “The Legend of Korra.”

At 93, she gave Hollywood one of its great late-career moments. Saint appeared at the 90th Academy Awards in March 2018 to present the Oscar for costume design — and received a standing ovation from the room, a tribute to a living link with the industry’s golden age that People and other outlets marked as one of the night’s highlights.

She remained spry and plainspoken about her longevity. Ahead of her 100th birthday in 2024, she told People she planned to celebrate the milestone with four generations of family members, adding, “I certainly don’t feel 100 years old.” In a 2014 conversation with film historian Robert Osborne at the TCM Classic Film Festival, she mused that the longer you live, the smarter you get — a lifetime of people met and experiences weathered, she said, can only make an actress better at understanding things.

Saint married producer and director Jeffrey Hayden on October 28, 1951. They were married for 65 years, until Hayden’s death in 2016, and had two children, Darrell and Laurette, and four grandchildren. She held two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — one for motion pictures, one for television. Her career spanned seven decades and paired her with many of Hollywood’s biggest names, as USA Today wrote — but it was the grace with which she carried it, on screen and off, that made her singular. Elsewhere in Los Angeles this week, federal investigators released their preliminary report on the Sept. 15 NewsChopper4 crash in Chatsworth.