Eva Marie Saint Dies: Oscar Winner & ‘On the Waterfront’ Star Was 102

Eva Marie Saint, best known for her Oscar-winning work in On the Waterfront as well as her role in North by Northwest, has died at the age of 102.

According to Deadline, a rep for the actress said she died Tuesday, October 6, at her Los Angeles home.

Saint was born on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, and she discovered acting while a student at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University (where a campus theater was later named after her). She first became known to audiences with her work in radio and television dramas in the 1940s and 1950s, including opposite Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra in a production of Our Town for Producers’ Showcase and Middle of the Night for Philco TV Playhouse on NBC; the latter earned her an Emmy nomination in 1955. She was also recognized with a Drama Critics Award in 1953 for her work on Broadway opposite Lillian Gish in The Trip to Bountiful.

Saint was best known for playing Edie Doyle, the young sister of a murdered dockworker who captures the heart of dockhand Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in On the Waterfront, for which she received an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. That success brought her to the forefront of Hollywood actresses, and she followed it up with similar roles; she brought emotional depth and grace to serious dramas. She was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1958 for her portrayal of the pregnant wife of Don Murray‘s drug-addicted war veteran in A Hatful of Rain and played Montgomery Clift‘s jilted sweetheart in Edward Dmytryk’s Civil War drama, Raintree Country.

Following those, Alfred Hitchcock cast Saint as a seductive spy who comes to the aid of but falls in love with the advertising executive played by Cary Grant in North by Northwest in 1959. It was a different role for her, one that also featured her in action sequences, but she received some of the best reviews of her career for her work in it.

In 1960, she received stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to both television and motion pictures. By then, she was moving away from Hollywood to spend more time with her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden (who died in 2016), and their two children, but her film credits that decade still included Otto Preminger‘s Exodus as an American nurse who becomes involved in the founding of the state of Israel; All Fall Down as a pregnant girl destroyed by Warren Beatty‘s wastrel; racing picture Grand Prix; The Sandpiper; and The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! She had two features in the 1970s, including as the wife of rudderless commercial artist George Segal in Loving.

Beginning in the mid-1960s and beyond, Saint moved into television, including Taxi, a two-person drama with Martin Sheen that earned her an Emmy nomination—one of four she received over her career, alongside a win for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Special for People Like Us in 1990. Her TV projects over the next three decades included When Hell Was in Session, The Best Little Girl in the World (as the mother of an anorexic teen played by Jennifer Jason Leigh), Fatal Vision (as a mother fighting for justice for her murdered daughter, based on the Jeffrey MacDonald trial), A Year in the Life, and Moonlighting (as the mother of Cybill Shepherd‘s character).

Saint did return to movies playing Tom Hanks‘ mother in the Garry Marshall comedy Nothing in Common in 1986, then again in 2006 in Superman Returns as Martha Kent, the Man of Steel’s (Brandon Routh) adoptive mother.

Saint is survived by her two children Laurette and Darrell and four grandchildren Eli, Tyler, Molly, and Stella.