Eva Marie Saint, Hollywood Golden Age star and oldest living Oscar winner, dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actor who made one of Hollywood's most celebrated debuts opposite Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" and later matched wits with Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest," has died. She was 102.

Saint died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, family representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed. Her career spanned more than seven decades, and she continued to take on work well into her 90s.

At her death, Saint was the oldest living Academy Award winner and one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood's Golden Age.

An Oscar on her first try

Few performers have entered the movies the way Saint did. Cast in 1954 as Edie Doyle, the gentle young woman who draws out the conscience of Brando's troubled dockworker Terry Malloy, she won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her very first film role.

The ceremony was memorable for another reason. As the Associated Press noted, Saint was heavily pregnant with her first child when Frank Sinatra handed her the statuette, and she joked to the audience, "I think I may have the baby right here." Her son, Darrell, arrived two days later.

The win made her an overnight star, but Saint quickly showed Hollywood she would set her own terms. She declined studio contracts and passed on the chance to cash in on her sudden fame, saying she wanted time at home to get to know her newborn son. A daughter, Laurette, followed in 1958.

Choosing roles carefully

Over her first decade in Hollywood, Saint made only seven films. She turned down prominent projects including "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" with Gregory Peck, "The Rainmaker" with Burt Lancaster and "Summer and Smoke" with Laurence Harvey.

According to AP, she said it was her husband, television and stage director Jeffrey Hayden, who convinced her to accept the role that would become her other signature part: Eve Kendall, the cool, mysterious spy in Hitchcock's 1959 thriller "North by Northwest" who seduces Grant's character on assignment and then genuinely falls for him. In a 2014 Vanity Fair interview, Saint recalled that Hayden offered to look after the children so she could go somewhere quiet and reread the script, and she credited him with steering her right.

Her selectiveness did not cool the studios' interest. She went on to star in "Raintree County" with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, "Exodus" with Paul Newman, and "All Fall Down" with Warren Beatty.

A second act on television

Saint shifted increasingly to television in the 1970s and found a new generation of fans in the 1980s, playing Cybill Shepherd's mother on the hit series "Moonlighting" and Tom Hanks' mother in the comedy "Nothing in Common." She won an Emmy for the 1990 miniseries "People Like Us."

In the 21st century she appeared in "Because of Winn-Dixie," played Martha Kent in "Superman Returns," and had a role in "Winter's Tale," based on Mark Helprin's novel. In 2021, she voiced Marisa Tomei's aunt in "The Bus Ride," a short audio drama from "The Pack Podcast."

She was married to Hayden for 65 years, until his death in 2016.

With inputs by The Associated Press