Eva Marie Saint, Oscar-winning actress of ‘On the Waterfront’ and ‘North by Northwest’, dies at 102
Eva Marie Saint, the 102-year-old actress who won an Academy Award for her supporting role in “On the Waterfront,” died Tuesday at her Los Angeles home. Her career spanned film, television and stage, earning two Hollywood Walk of Fame stars.
Eva Marie Saint, an Academy Award-winning actress known for her roles in classic films such as “On the Waterfront” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 102.
Saint earned the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1955 for playing Edie Doyle opposite Marlon Brando. The New York Times praised her performance, noting that “amid scenes of carnage, she gives tenderness and sensitivity to genuine romance.”
Variety highlighted her portrayal of the spy Eve Kendall on her 97th birthday, writing that she “provides the requisite icy sex appeal as a shadowy secret agent, but she also proves to be much more than a standard damsel in distress.”
After her early film success, Saint alternated between screen and stage work, appearing in television series such as “Moonlighting” and playing Clark Kent’s adoptive mother in the 2006 film “Superman Returns.” She also performed on Broadway and in regional theater, earning multiple Emmy nominations and winning a supporting-actress Emmy in 1990 for the miniseries “People Like Us.”
Saint held two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—one for motion pictures and one for television—and remained active in industry and charitable organizations, including the Motion Picture and Television Fund and the Epilepsy Foundation of Los Angeles. She was survived by her two children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren; her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, predeceased her in 2016.