Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning star of On the Waterfront and North by Northwest whose career spanned more than 70 years, has died at the age of 102, her publicist said Tuesday.
Saint brought a poised intensity to both cinema and television, working with some of the era’s most influential directors, among them Alfred Hitchcock and Elia Kazan. Her achievements also included an Emmy Award.
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Her representative, Jeff Sanderson, said Saint died of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and loved ones.
Kazan’s crime drama, scored by Leonard Bernstein, is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.
The 1954 picture featured a celebrated ensemble led by Marlon Brando, who also won an Oscar for his performance.
For Saint, who played the luminous love interest opposite Brando’s tormented, hard-edged boxer, the film became a breakthrough that launched her to Hollywood prominence.
Eva Marie Saint and Marlon Brando during the filming of On the Waterfront
She followed that success by starring opposite Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
Saint was an unexpected choice for the role of the director’s signature blonde: a double-agent femme fatale who draws Grant’s character into danger.
Her performance proved the casting right, even though she never worked with Hitchcock again. The English director was known for pushing his leading women relentlessly and exercising meticulous control over his actors.
“He worked with me from the outside in,” she later said.
“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.”
Timeless performance
Saint’s filmography continued to grow with Otto Preminger’s Exodus, in which she appeared opposite Paul Newman in 1960.
Two years later, she played Warren Beatty’s romantic counterpart in John Frankenheimer’s All Fall Down.
With major stardom within reach, Saint “could have been a contender” — borrowing the most famous line from On the Waterfront — but chose instead to reduce her workload and raise her family with director Jeffrey Hayden.
Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant in North by Northwest
Her eldest son, Darrell, was born just two days after she received her Oscar.
Critics have increasingly singled out Saint’s portrayal of Edie in On the Waterfront as the film’s defining performance, challenging the longstanding focus on its male stars.
Her quiet, controlled approach stood in sharp contrast to Brando’s volatile method-acting style.
“He was adorable – really adorable, but a little frightening,” she later said of her enigmatic co-star.
“I felt that he could see right through me,” she told Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 2013.
After more than five decades away from her earliest triumphs, Saint returned to the big screen as Superman’s adoptive mother in the 2006 blockbuster Superman Returns, appearing in her early 80s.
She continued working into her mid-90s, taking a supporting role in the supernatural fantasy Winter’s Tale alongside Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, as well as playing a mother superior in the convent drama Mariette in Ecstasy, released in 2019.
Yet television remained particularly close to her, having been the medium where she first honed her craft in live dramatic productions.
In 1990, she won an Emmy for portraying a wealthy widow in the acclaimed miniseries People Like Us.
65-year marriage
Saint was born on 4 July, 1924 in Newark, New Jersey, to Quaker parents whom she credited with instilling her discipline.
She enrolled at Bowling Green State University intending to become a teacher, but her growing love of theatre led her to graduate with a degree in dramatic arts.
In New York, Saint studied at the Herbert Berghof Studio before joining the Actors Studio, the influential home of method acting co-founded by Kazan.
Eva Marie Saint at the Art Directors Guild 20th Annual Excellence in Production Awards in Beverly Hills in January 2016
Saint and Hayden’s marriage was an uncommon Hollywood success story, lasting 65 years until his death in 2016.
She was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and often said that a long life had deepened her understanding of the characters she played.
“The longer you live, the smarter you get, because you’ve been around, you’ve seen things,” she told TCM.
“You’ve gone through different emotional experiences in your own life, and hopefully, you understand things better.
“And that makes you a better actress.”
Source: AFP
