Eva Marie Saint, the actress who took home an Academy Award for her memorable 1955 debut in On the Waterfront, has died at 102. Family representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed to the New York Times that she died in Los Angeles on Tuesday in her home. In the film, which also won Best Picture, Saint played Edie, the convent-educated love interest of Marlon Brando’s longshoreman. Director Elia Kazan handpicked her after her performance in Horton Foote’s 1953 play The Trip to Bountiful. Foote was captured by what he called her “ability to transmit an inner purity.” Kazan agreed, and that same quality made her his pick for Edie. When Saint accepted her Oscar, she was nine months pregnant and told the audience, “I’m so excited I may have the baby right here.” Two days later, her son was born. Despite her early success, Saint was focused on motherhood, opting to make only one movie a year while her children were growing up. But her career was far from over. Saint went on to play an elusive mystery woman opposite Cary Grant in North by Northwest. She also won an Emmy in 1990 for the NBC film People Like Us. She kept working into her later years, playing Superman’s foster mother, Martha Kent, in 2006’s Superman Returns. She married TV director Jeffrey Hayden in 1951. He died in 2016. She leaves behind two children, Darrell and Laurette. She also has four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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