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LOS ANGELES — Eva Marie Saint, the blonde, willowy actress who won an Academy Award for her first film, “On the Waterfront,” and starred opposite Cary Grant in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest,” has died. She was 102.
Saint, whose acting career was well into her 90s, died at her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday, family representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed.
Saint had one of the most surprising edits in Hollywood history, as Marlon Brando’s love interest Terry Malloy in “On the Waterfront”, and her first trip to the Academy Awards was also memorable. Pregnant with her first child, Saint accepted her Oscar from Frank Sinatra and beamed with laughter at a special winner’s speech: “I think my baby might be here. (Her son, Darrell, was born two days later.)
The award for the 1954 classic made her an instant star, but she soon shocked Hollywood with a fierce independence that would mark her career. She turned down offers of studio contracts and refused the chance to continue her huge success, explaining that she was taking time off to get to know her new son. (A daughter, Laurette, was born in 1958.)
In her first decade in Hollywood, Saint appeared in only seven films. She turned down high-profile productions such as “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” with Gregory Peck, “Summer and Smoke” with Laurence Harvey and “The Rainmaker” with Burt Lancaster. She credited her husband, TV and stage director Jeffrey Hayden, with convincing her to appear in Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” the classic 1959 thriller in which Saint plays a spy who seduces Grant, but ends up falling for him.
“I vividly remember him saying, ‘Honey, I think you should find a quiet place. I’ll take care of the kids and I want you to think about this and re-read this script,'” she told Vanity Fair in 2014. “He was so right. And that’s what husbands are for.
Instead of being put off by her choice, studios continued to offer leading roles in films like “Exodus” (with Newman), “Raintree County” (Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift) and “All Fall Down,” with Warren Beatty.
She turned more to television in the 1970s and was popular in the 1980s as Cybill Shepherd’s mother in the famous sitcom “Moonlighting” and as Tom Hanks’ mother in the comedy film “Nothing in Common”. She won an Emmy for the 1990 miniseries “People Like Us,” and had roles in 21st-century films such as “Because of Winn-Dixie,” “Superman Returns” and “Winter’s Tale,” adapted from Mark Helprin’s novel of the same name. In 2021, she played Marisa Tomei’s aunt in the short play “The Bus Ride”, part of “The Pack Podcast”.
Saint was married to Hayden for 55 years, until his death in 2016.
When the Saint appeared in the public consciousness, many believed that her drama name had to be created. She was born with him on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey. The family moved to Delmar, a small town near Albany, New York, where her father was a manager at Goodrich Rubber Co. Eva’s goal was to become a third grade teacher like her mother, but at Bowling Green State University in Ohio she tried out for a play and won the lead role.
After graduating she lived with her parents in Flushing, Long Island, and began hunting for acting jobs in Manhattan. After an unproductive year, she landed a two-line role as a telephone operator on a radio drama and was soon working regularly on soap operas and nighttime dramas, appearing for two years as Claudia on “One Man’s Family.” Network television was booming in the early 1950s, and her amazing looks and sensibility made her a favorite with casting agents and people.
A critical turning point in Saint’s career came when she auditioned for Elia Kazan and was accepted into the Actors Studio, which shaped a generation of acting stars. She credited acting coach Lee Strasberg with helping her overcome her shyness.
“Lee Strasberg, when he got to know me a little bit, gave me a scene where I had to cry in front of my peers,” she told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2009. “I worried about it, I worked on it, I tried to use what I was learning at the studio. I did the last scene, and I cried, and my peers were crying with me.”
Saint was rejected for the only female role in the play “Mister Roberts,” but was hired to understand the chosen actor, Jocelyn Brando, Marlon’s sister. In six frustrating months Saint never got to replace Brando. She finally came to Broadway in “A Trip to Bountiful”, which she played on television.
Kazan invited her to try for the female lead in “On the Waterfront” by preparing a scene with Brando. She was asked to try to stop a young man from entering her flat. She told the Los Angeles Times in 2001: “All I know is that Marlon got in the door and we turned up the music. We started dancing. He showed my skirt. Kazan saw the sparks fly, and that’s how I got the part.”
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Thomas, a former Associated Press Hollywood journalist who died in 2014, was the main writer of this obituary.
