Eva Marie Saint, Oscar-winning star of 'On the Waterfront' and 'North by Northwest,' dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress whose performances in “On the Waterfront” and “North by Northwest” made her one of the defining stars of mid-century Hollywood, died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, her representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed. She was 102.

Saint died of natural causes, “surrounded by family and loved ones,” according to a statement from Sanderson reported by USA Today and other outlets. The family spokesperson announcement was also carried by The Hollywood Reporter, which noted she died at her Los Angeles home.

Born July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, to a Quaker family, Saint graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1946 and began acting on live television and radio in New York. She made her film debut as Edie Doyle opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” (1954), a role that earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

At the 1955 ceremony, Saint was nine months pregnant when she accepted the Oscar from Frank Sinatra. “I think I may have the baby right here,” she joked, according to the Associated Press. Her son Darrell was born two days later.

Her other signature role came in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller “North by Northwest,” in which she played Eve Kendall opposite Cary Grant. Hitchcock, she recalled in a 2014 Vanity Fair interview, directed her “from the outside in,” focusing on her hair, makeup, and wardrobe rather than emotion. “He told me not to use my hands, I have a habit of doing that, and to lower my voice. And always, in my scenes with Cary Grant, look directly into his eyes, which was not difficult,” she said.

After “North by Northwest,” Saint deliberately slowed her film work to raise her two children with husband Jeffrey Hayden, a television and stage director. She told CBS News in 2014 that an agent warned her she would not become a superstar if she limited herself to one film a year. “And I said, well, I guess not,” she recalled.

Saint continued acting across seven decades, winning an Emmy for the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us,” playing Cybill Shepherd’s mother on the 1980s series “Moonlighting,” and appearing in later films including “Because of Winn-Dixie” (2005) and “Superman Returns” (2006), in which she played Martha Kent. Her final film was “Winter’s Tale” (2014).

With her death, Saint leaves behind a body of work that bridged the live-television era and the Hollywood studio system. She was among the last surviving stars of the industry’s golden age and, after Olivia de Havilland’s death in 2020, the oldest living Oscar-winning actor, according to USA Today.