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

Eva Marie Saint died Tuesday, October 6, at her home in Los Angeles. She was 102.

Her death was confirmed by family representative Jeff Sanderson, who attributed it to natural causes and said she was surrounded by family and loved ones, according to NBC News.

A debut that won an Oscar

Saint's first film role made her a star. Director Elia Kazan cast her, plucked from the Broadway stage, to play Edie Doyle in 1954's "On the Waterfront," opposite Marlon Brando's longshoreman Terry Malloy, according to the Los Angeles Times. Edie is a convent-educated woman seeking justice after her brother is murdered amid union corruption on the Hoboken, New Jersey docks.

Saint won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for the role. She was pregnant at the time, and accepted the Oscar from Frank Sinatra with a line that became part of Hollywood lore: "I think I may have the baby right here," according to the Associated Press, via ABC News. Her son, Darrell, was born two days later.

Saint told NBC News in 2006 that Brando was the finest actor she ever worked with, calling him a "genius" and a "prince" who draped his jacket over her shoulders between takes on the cold Hoboken waterfront.

From Hitchcock's spy to television staple

Five years after "On the Waterfront," Saint took on a very different role: the elegant double agent Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 thriller "North by Northwest," opposite Cary Grant, according to NPR. The film's climax, with Grant and Saint dangling from a model of Mount Rushmore, remains one of the most recognized sequences in American cinema.

Saint credited her husband, television and stage director Jeffrey Hayden, whom she married in 1951, with pushing her to take the part, she told Vanity Fair in 2014. "I vividly remember him saying, 'Honey, I think you should find a quiet spot. I'll take care of the children and I want you to really think about this and reread this script,'" she said, according to ABC News. "He was so right. And that's what husbands are for."

Despite her early success, Saint deliberately limited her film output, turning down roles in "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," "Summer and Smoke" and "The Rainmaker" to focus on raising her children, Darrell and a daughter, Laurette, born in 1958, according to ABC News. Across more than 50 years, she appeared in roughly 20 feature films, working with Paul Newman in "Exodus," Elizabeth Taylor in "Raintree County," Warren Beatty in "All Fall Down," Yves Montand in "Grand Prix" and Gregory Peck in "The Stalking Moon," per the Los Angeles Times.

She moved toward television in the 1970s, later landing a recurring role as Cybill Shepherd's mother on "Moonlighting" and playing Tom Hanks' mother in "Nothing in Common." In 1990 she won an Emmy for the miniseries "People Like Us" after five total nominations, according to NBC News.

A career that stretched into her 90s

Saint kept working well past the age most actors retire. She appeared in "Because of Winn-Dixie" and "Don't Come Knocking" in 2005, played Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Superman, in "Superman Returns" in 2006, and had a cameo in "Winter's Tale" in 2014. As recently as 2021, she voiced a role in the audio drama "The Bus Ride" opposite Marisa Tomei, according to ABC News.

Saint grew up in Albany and nearby Delmar, New York, and trained at the Actors Studio before breaking into live television drama in the late 1940s, according to NPR. She described her first screen test with Brando, arranged by Kazan, as the moment that changed her career's course. "I don't know what happened, but he came in the living room. We were dancing, we were laughing, I was crying," she told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2000. "And Kazan saw that. And suddenly I was in 'On the Waterfront.'"

Reflecting on her long career in a 2014 interview with Turner Classic Movies, Saint offered a simple explanation for her longevity in an industry that chewed through its stars. "You know how to stay young? Go with the flow," she said.

Saint was among the last living stars of Hollywood's studio era, having worked alongside Brando, Grant, Newman, Peck and Taylor under directors including Hitchcock, Kazan, Vincente Minnelli and Otto Preminger. No public memorial details had been announced as of Tuesday evening.