Eva Marie Saint, Oscar-winning actress, dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint, the Academy Award-winning actress celebrated for her roles in classic films such as On the Waterfront and North by Northwest, died on Tuesday at her Los Angeles home, surrounded by family, according to a family representative.

Saint earned the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her debut in Elia Kazan’s 1954 drama On the Waterfront, where she played Edie Doyle opposite Marlon Brando. Five years later she appeared as Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller North by Northwest, acting opposite Cary Grant.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1924, Saint began her career in live television in the late 1940s before moving to film. She later won an Emmy in 1990 for her role in the miniseries People Like Us.

"I felt that he could see right through me," Saint said of Brando in a 2013 interview with Turner Classic Movies.

"He worked with me from the outside in. My hair, my makeup, my shoes, my jewellery, my purse, my gloves, everything. And just from creating that exterior for me, he gave me the sense of a spy lady," she recalled about Hitchcock’s direction.

Saint also appeared with Paul Newman in Exodus (1960) and with Warren Beatty in All Fall Down (1961). After scaling back her career to raise a family with husband director Jeffrey Hayden, she returned to film in later years, including a role as Superman’s adoptive mother in Superman Returns (2006) and parts in Winter’s Tale and Mariette in Ecstasy.

She held two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to film and television and was, until her death, the oldest living Oscar winner.

Saint is survived by two children; her husband Hayden predeceased her in 2016.