Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress known for ‘On the Waterfront’ and ‘North by Northwest’, has died at 102.
She died on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and loved ones, her representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed to USA TODAY and other outlets.
Saint was one of the last surviving links to Hollywood’s Golden Age, with a career that spanned seven decades across live television, Broadway, film and television.
After Olivia de Havilland’s death in July 2020, she held the title of the oldest living Academy Award winner.
From Teaching Dream to Actors Studio
Born on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, to Quaker parents John Merle Saint and Eva Marie Rice, Saint originally planned to become a teacher. She grew up in Delmar, New York, and attended Bethlehem Central High School where she was active in student government.
She discovered acting while studying at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where she later had a theatre named in her honour – the Eva Marie Saint Theatre. After graduating in 1946 with a degree in speech and a minor in sculpture, she moved to New York, worked as an NBC page, and studied at the legendary Actors Studio under Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg alongside Marlon Brando.
She built her reputation in live television drama in the late 1940s and early 1950s during television’s golden age. At a time when broadcasts were performed live, she appeared in more than 40 anthology programs including Philco Television Playhouse, Studio One, Robert Montgomery Presents, Goodyear Television Playhouse and One Man’s Family, earning a reputation one critic called “the Helen Hayes of television.” Her delicate beauty and naturalistic style made her a favorite of directors adapting serious drama for the small screen.
She made her Broadway debut in 1953 in Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful, winning the Outer Critics Circle Award and a Theatre World Award for her performance as Thelma. The play would later win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Oscar Win That Changed Everything
Saint made her feature-film debut in Elia Kazan’s 1954 crime drama On the Waterfront, starring opposite Marlon Brando.
She had been suggested for the role by Kazan himself, who remembered her from the Actors Studio. For her screen test, she improvised a scene with Brando in which she kept him out of her house, a moment she later said was electric with tension. “We were dancing, we were laughing, I was crying… and the sparks flew,” she told NPR’s Fresh Air in 2000.
She played Edie Doyle, the sister of a murdered longshoreman who becomes morally and romantically involved with Brando’s conflicted dockworker Terry Malloy. The performance, noted for its quiet Catholic schoolgirl innocence against Brando’s brooding intensity, won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 27th Academy Awards in 1955.
She famously accepted the award two days before giving birth to her first child, Darrell, opening her speech with, “I may have the baby right here!“
The film itself won eight Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Director for Kazan and Best Screenplay. It remains ranked by the American Film Institute among the greatest American films ever made, with Leonard Bernstein’s score adding to its legacy.
Rather than pursuing constant leading roles and a studio contract, Saint chose a selective path, limiting herself to about a film a year to focus on her young family. It was an unusual decision in an era when studios expected total availability from their new stars, but one she never regretted.
Becoming Hitchcock’s Blonde in North by Northwest
Five years after her Oscar win, Saint took on her second defining role in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest.
She was considered a surprise choice to play Eve Kendall, a double agent femme fatale opposite Cary Grant. Hitchcock’s previous blondes had been more overtly cool and aloof, but Saint brought warmth, wit and vulnerability to the role. The film follows Grant’s Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive mistaken for a government agent, as he is pulled into a dangerous cross-country chase.
The role showed a different side of her range, bringing sophistication, mystery and humour to one of Hitchcock’s best-known films, famous for its crop-duster sequence and Mount Rushmore finale.
Saint later recalled Hitchcock’s meticulous, almost couture-like direction: “He worked with me from the outside in. My hair, my makeup, my shoes, my jewelry, my purse, my gloves, everything. And just from creating that exterior for me, he gave me the sense of a spy lady.”
Her other films included Fred Zinnemann’s A Hatful of Rain (1957) opposite Don Murray, for which she received a BAFTA nomination, Raintree County (1957) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, Otto Preminger’s Exodus (1960) opposite Paul Newman, the racing epic Grand Prix (1966), the Russians Are Coming (1966) and The Stalking Moon (1968) with Gregory Peck.
Saint’s Television, Emmy Win and Later Career
Saint built a substantial television career, earning five Primetime Emmy nominations and winning Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Special in 1990 for NBC’s People Like Us as Lil Altemus, a role that dealt with family and personal struggle.
Her TV credits included the acclaimed Our Town (1955), the western saga How the West Was Won (1977-79), Taxi!!! (1978), Moonlighting (1986) and the true-crime miniseries Fatal Vision (1984).
A later generation came to know her as Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Clark Kent, in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns (2006) opposite Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth. The role connected her directly to modern superhero cinema and introduced her to audiences who had not grown up with her classic films. She also appeared in family films including Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) and voiced the elderly Katara in Nickelodeon’s The Legend of Korra (2012-2014).
Her final screen appearance was in Akiva Goldsman’s Winter’s Tale (2014) alongside Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, according to biographical records. She received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard and one for television at 6730 Hollywood Boulevard.
Family and Enduring Legacy
Saint married producer and director Jeffrey Hayden on October 28, 1951, after meeting him in New York. They were married for 65 years until his death in 2016 and had two children, Darrell Hayden, a producer, and Laurette Hayden, and four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. The family often lived between Los Angeles and New York.
She celebrated her 100th birthday on July 4, 2024, in Los Angeles with four generations of family, telling local press she was grateful for a life built on choice rather than fame.
Known for her elegance, Quaker-rooted poise and refusal to chase celebrity, Saint’s career became a model of longevity without overexposure. She turned down roles that required extended location shooting away from her children and turned down publicity that focused on her private life.
With her death, Hollywood loses one of its most elegant and disciplined performers whose quiet, controlled style defined two of the most celebrated American films and carried her across seven decades, from live black-and-white television to big-budget superhero cinema.
