Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress celebrated for classic films such as North by Northwest and On the Waterfront, has died at the age of 102.
A spokesperson for Saint said she died on Tuesday from natural causes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Saint won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her film debut in 1954’s On the Waterfront, in which she starred opposite screen legend Marlon Brando.
Over the course of her long career, Saint also received a Primetime Emmy Award and earned nominations for a Golden Globe and two BAFTA Awards.
Alongside Brando and Cary Grant, her co-star in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller North by Northwest, Saint appeared with a remarkable roster of leading men, including Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, James Garner and Bob Hope.
Although she continued acting into the 2010s, Saint remains best known for the landmark films she made during the 1950s—particularly Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront and her celebrated collaboration with Hitchcock on North by Northwest.
Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress known for classic films including North by Northwest and On the Waterfront, has died at 102. Her spokesperson said she died on Tuesday from natural causes, according to The Hollywood Reporter; above, in 2019
One of Eva Marie Saint’s best-known films was Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (above), in which she played a double agent who helps an innocent man caught in a deadly conspiracy involving murder and espionage (Cary Grant)
Saint made her feature-film debut in On the Waterfront, starring Brando as Terry Malloy, a former boxer who becomes a longshoreman after a local mob boss pressures him to lose a match.
After Terry witnesses the mobster’s henchmen murder a dock worker to stop him from testifying in a corruption investigation, he must choose between speaking out and remaining silent so he can keep his job.
Saint played Edie, the murdered dock worker’s sister, who urges Terry to testify before the commission.
For her first screen role, Saint won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and received a nomination from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for Most Promising Newcomer.
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Her immediate success in Hollywood brought a succession of leading roles—and paychecks far greater than the $7,500 she earned for On the Waterfront.
The actress also demonstrated her comic talent when she followed On the Waterfront with That Certain Feeling in 1956, appearing opposite comedian Bob Hope.
The following year, Saint took on another very different role in the Civil War drama Raintree County, which also featured her lifelong friends Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
Saint further tested the boundaries of Hollywood censorship under the Production Code with the 1957 addiction drama A Hatful of Rain. The performance earned her another BAFTA nomination, this time for Best Foreign Actress.
Saint’s first masterpiece was On the Waterfront (1954; above), starring Marlon Brando (L) as a prizefighter-turned-longshoreman torn between testifying in a corruption investigation and staying silent to preserve his job at a mob-controlled dock
Saint, who was paid only $7,500 to appear in On the Waterfront (pictured), made her feature-film debut in the Elia Kazan-directed drama
For her first film role, Saint won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for a British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Most Promising Newcomer; above, in 1955
Saint’s other defining film arrived near the end of the 1950s, when Alfred Hitchcock cast her as his latest glamorous blonde opposite Cary Grant in the comic spy thriller North by Northwest.
The film, a more ambitious return to Hitchcock’s early-career thrillers about a ‘wrong man’ who is swept up into espionage against his will, starred Grant as an ad executive who is mistaken for a spy by a dangerous group of international criminals.
Saint played a nuanced role as the apparent femme fatale and arm candy of the villain (played by James Mason), but she’s later revealed to be a double agent working behind the scenes for a US intelligence agency.
The breezy film was a hit with critics and audiences alike, becoming one of the best-regarded movies Saint, Grant and Hitchcock ever made.
At the end of the ’50s, Saint scored another hit with critics and audiences alike in North by Northwest (above)