Eva Marie Saint, the Academy Award-winning actor who made her film debut opposite Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront” and later played a cool, calculating spy for director Alfred Hitchcock, died Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026, at her home in Los Angeles. She was 102.
Jeff Sanderson, a family representative, said she died of natural causes, surrounded by family and loved ones.
Until her death she was the oldest surviving Oscar winner and one of the last remaining stars of Hollywood’s golden age.
An Oscar on Her Debut
Saint won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her movie debut as Edie Doyle in director Elia Kazan’s 1954 crime drama “On the Waterfront.” Her character was the moral center of the picture and the love interest of Brando’s conflicted boxer-turned-docker.
She collected the trophy while pregnant and quipped from the stage: “I may have the baby right here!” Her son was born two days later.
Saint trained in New York at the Actors Studio, home of method acting, which Kazan co-founded. Before that she studied at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York.
Brando was a committed method actor. In an interview with Turner Classic Movies — dated 2013 in one account and 2014 in another — Saint recalled finding him both endearing and slightly unnerving. She called him “adorable” but “a little frightening.”
A Spy for Hitchcock
Five years later she played femme fatale Eve Kendall in Hitchcock’s 1959 spy thriller “North by Northwest,” seducing — and then falling for — the advertising executive played by Cary Grant. She credited her husband with talking her into the role.
In her first decade in Hollywood she appeared in only seven films. She turned down “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” with Gregory Peck, “Summer and Smoke” with Laurence Harvey, and “The Rainmaker” with Burt Lancaster. Her agent, she said, warned she would never reach the top tier of stardom if she kept saying no.
Her other films included “That Certain Feeling” with Bob Hope, Otto Preminger’s “Exodus” in 1960 with Paul Newman and John Frankenheimer’s “All Fall Down” with Warren Beatty. On television she played the mother of Cybill Shepherd’s character on the 1980s sitcom “Moonlighting,” and she won an Emmy Award in 1990 for her role as wealthy widow Lil Van Degan Altemus in the miniseries “People Like Us.” She had been nominated for four Emmys dating back to 1954. She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for her movie and television work.
Saint scaled back her career to raise a family, then returned to blockbuster filmmaking in her 80s, playing Clark Kent’s adoptive mother, Martha Kent, in the 2006 release “Superman Returns.” She also appeared in “Because of Winn-Dixie,” the 2014 fantasy “Winter’s Tale” alongside Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, adapted from Mark Helprin’s novel, and the 2019 nun drama “Mariette in Ecstasy.” In 2021 she played Marisa Tomei’s aunt in the audio play “The Bus Ride,” part of “The Pack Podcast.”
Animation Fans Mourn Online
Saint voiced the elderly Katara in Nickelodeon’s “The Legend of Korra,” which premiered in 2012. She took over the character at age 85 from Mae Whitman, who had voiced the young Katara in “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”
Animation fans mourned Saint online in the days after the Oct. 6 announcement. The account ToonHive posted on X on Oct. 6: “Eva Marie Saint, the elderly voice of Katara in ‘Avatar: The Legend of Korra,’ has sadly passed away at the age of 102.” By Thursday, Oct. 8, the post had been seen more than 750,000 times and liked about 68,000 times.
Fan account avatarnetflixtv_ wrote on Threads, reacting to her death: “Hollywood has lost one of its greats.” The same post added: “Avatar fans have lost the voice of a beloved elder.” Jon Carlos Hardwick wrote in a reply under the ToonHive post: “R.I.P 102 is a long full life glad she was able to make it to that age. Most people don’t.”
Early Life and Survivors
Saint was born July 4, 1924, in Newark, N.J., and grew up in Albany and Delmar, N.Y. She enrolled at Bowling Green State University in Ohio intending to become a schoolteacher, a plan that derailed when she auditioned for a school play and won a leading role. She returned to New York and took a job as an NBC page.
Her first television role came on the game show “Campus Hoopla,” and she began working steadily in live television in the late 1940s. She built a career in radio, television and theater in New York City before making Los Angeles her home in 1956. She was married to television and stage director Jeffrey Hayden for 65 years, until his death in December 2016.
Saint told the Santa Barbara Independent in 2010: “I want to continue working, but my family always comes first.”
She is survived by her children, Darrell and Laurette, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
