Eva Marie Saint, star of "On the Waterfront" and "North by Northwest," dies at age 102
Academy Award-winning actor Eva Marie Saint, who starred in such classics as "On the Waterfront" and "North by Northwest," but also bucked Hollywood conventions throughout her lengthy career, has died.She was 102.Her publicist, Jeff Sanderson, said she died of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and loved ones.A regal-looking blonde who ricocheted from playing sultry spies to Southern belles and Superman's stepmother, Saint made her motion picture debut opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront" (1954).
Saint played Edie Doyle, whose brother was murdered by thugs working for a mob boss running a longshoremen's union; her character becomes involved with Brando's pugilistic dockworker Terry Malloy. Her performance earned Saint one of the film's eight Academy Awards.(She was only the fourth person to win a best supporting actress Oscar for their film debut.) On the night she received her award, she was visibly pregnant.
"I may have the baby right here!" she said.(Her son, Darrell, was born two days later.) Saint married director-producer Jeffrey Hayden in 1951, and the couple stayed together for 65 years until his death in 2016.
They had two children.Saint had made it clear that family was more important to her than her career. "I had an agent once who wanted me to make many more movies," she told CBS' "Sunday Morning" in 2014.
"I said, 'I can't.I can only do one a year, if that.
I have children, young children.' And he said, 'Well, I guess you won't be a superstar.' And I said, 'Well, I guess not.'"And what happened to that agent? "Fired him," she said. She kept up her self-imposed limit on films; she also brought her extended family to the set of Otto Preminger's "Exodus" while filming in Cyprus and Israel.Despite not cranking out movies, Saint followed her Oscar win by appearing in many prestige projects, including "A Hatful of Rain," "Raintree County," "All Fall Down," "The Russians A...