Saint recalled struggling with the film’s lone love scene because she felt self-conscious wearing a slip. “I’d done a lot of live television but never a movie,” she told the Times in 2010. Director Elia Kazan helped ease her nerves with a quiet word in her ear. “He didn’t say ‘Rosebud.’ He said, ‘Jeff.’ That’s all he had to say, and I was into it.”
Saint and Hayden welcomed their daughter, Laurette Hayden, in 1958. A year later, Saint landed another defining role: Eve Kendall in North by Northwest, securing her place among Alfred Hitchcock’s famously cool, sophisticated blondes.
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Saint said Hitchcock shaped her performance by carefully constructing the character’s appearance. “He worked with me from the outside in,” she told Vanity Fair in 2014, describing his attention to her hair, makeup, shoes, jewelry, handbag and gloves. That polished exterior made her feel like a spy, even though they never discussed the character’s emotions. Hitchcock also told her to keep her hands still, lower her voice and maintain direct eye contact with Cary Grant—an instruction she found easy to follow.