Eva Marie Saint, the star of classics from the 1950s onwards, has died aged 102. Her 75-year career included landmark roles in films such as North By Northwest and On the Waterfront.
Early career and breakthrough
Saint won an Oscar for best supporting actress with her very first screen performance, in On the Waterfront (1954). Despite looking eerily like Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, she is the steely moral centre of the film, setting the plot in motion by seeking justice when her whistleblowing brother is murdered by union mobsters and giving Marlon Brando’s conflicted hero a new sense of purpose.
On her third film, A Hatful of Rain (1957), Saint got top billing for her strong-willed performance as a pregnant wife who suspects her husband is having an affair. It turns out that the Korean war has turned him into a junkie. Daring for its era, but this earnest drama only catches fire when Henry Silva and William Hickey are hamming it up as drug dealers.
Iconic roles and later work
In North By Northwest (1959), Alfred Hitchcock cast Saint against type as femme fatale to Cary Grant’s man-on-the-run. She is sensational as the archetypal Hitchcock blonde: witty, soignée, duplicitous, ultimately heroic – and trading double entendres with her leading man in one of the sexiest train conversations in film history.
In Exodus (1960), Saint plays a naive American nurse who, in 1946, becomes embroiled in Paul Newman’s fight to establish the state of Israel. Otto Preminger’s epic, adapted by the formerly blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo from Leon Uris’s bestseller, is simplistic, exposition-heavy and lumbers on for ever.
In The Sandpiper (1965), Saint’s comfortable marriage to headteacher Richard Burton is rocked by his attraction to a free-spirited artist chick and single mother who lives in a beach house in California. Her diligent performance is somewhat eclipsed by the voluptuous force of nature that is Elizabeth Taylor.
In 36 Hours (1964), Saint is terrific as the German nurse who helps a US army major (James Garner) to dredge up lost memories. This Twilight Zone-ish thriller, based on a Roald Dahl story, shows its hand early on, but the psychological duel between Garner and his clinician (Rod Taylor) is gripping.
In Grand Prix (1966), the spectacular race footage overshadows the off-track soap opera antics of the drivers and their womenfolk. But Saint puts up a creditable show as the American journalist who falls for jaded champ Yves Montand, and finally gets to let rip with some heartbreaking emotion.
In The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), Saint and her playwright husband (Carl Reiner) play two of the islanders sent into a tizzy when a Soviet submarine runs aground on the New England coastline where they are on holiday. This cold war farce was a hit back in the days when you could play a Russian invasion for comedy.
In The Stalking Moon (1968), with a 1,000-yard stare mostly substituting for dialogue, Saint plays a white woman who, with her mixed-race son, is “rescued” from the Apaches by the US army. Gregory Peck is the scout escorting them to safety. But the boy’s ninja-like father is on their trail, slaughtering everything that moves. A great setup, and the landscape is stunning, but the characters are underdeveloped.
In That Certain Feeling (1956), Saint looks so adorable in Edith Head’s chic businesswoman outfits that you wish she had let her hair down more often in frivolous romcoms like this. Bob Hope almost underplays her neurotic ex-husband, hired to draw cartoons for her famous fiance (George Sanders, hilarious), whose syndicated comic-strip has lost its mojo. Pearl Bailey steals all her scenes as a matchmaking housekeeper.
This article was originally published on 28 June 2024, to mark the actor’s 100th birthday. Its headline and standfirst were updated on 6 October 2026, after her death.
