Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress who became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable stars in “On the Waterfront” and “North by Northwest,” has died at 102.
Saint died of natural causes Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, according to The New York Times.
Her breakthrough came in 1954 when she starred opposite Marlon Brando as Edie Doyle in “On the Waterfront.” Saint won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the role, while the film took home eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director.
Five years later, Saint took on another career-defining role in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest.”
She played Eve Kendall, a mysterious woman caught up in an international espionage plot who crosses paths with Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill. The film cemented Saint’s status as an iconic Hollywood leading lady.
Saint continued building an impressive film résumé over the following decades, appearing in movies including “Exodus,” “All Fall Down,” “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” “Grand Prix” and “The Sandpiper.”
Her career wasn’t limited to the big screen.
Saint frequently worked in television and theater, particularly while raising her family. Her television credits included “Moonlighting,” “Frasier,” “How the West Was Won” and “People Like Us,” for which she won an Emmy in 1990.
A later generation of moviegoers knew Saint as Martha Kent, the adoptive mother of Superman, in the 2006 superhero film “Superman Returns.”
Saint was married to television director Jeffrey Hayden, who died in 2016. The couple had two children, Darrell and Laurette, as well as four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
From the waterfront of 1950s New York to Hitchcock’s glamorous world of espionage and eventually the superhero universe, Saint maintained a career spanning generations of Hollywood.
Eva Marie Saint was 102.
