Passing of an Oscar winner in Los Angeles

Actress Eva Marie Saint died on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, at the age of 102 at her home in Los Angeles. Family representative Jeff Sanderson confirmed that she died of natural causes surrounded by relatives and close friends. At the time of her death, Saint was the oldest living recipient of an Academy Award. Her career across American theater, cinema, and television spanned more than seven decades, extending from live broadcasts in the early 1950s into feature films in the 21st century.

Breakthrough on Broadway and film debut

Born on 4 July 1924 near Newark, New Jersey, to Quaker parents, Saint originally prepared for a career in teaching. She studied literature at Bowling Green State University before discovering theater and graduating with a degree in dramatic arts. After early appearances in radio dramas and live television broadcasts, she joined the Actors Studio in New York to train under director Elia Kazan and acting teacher Lee Strasberg. In 1953, she won a Drama Critics Award for her Broadway performance in Horton Foote's play The Trip to Bountiful.

For me, staging a play is like being pregnant: a theater role is like a child, it is yours forever.

Kazan selected Saint over Elizabeth Montgomery for the role of Edie Doyle in the 1954 drama On the Waterfront after an audition in which she improvised a dance with Marlon Brando. The movie earned eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Kazan, Best Actor for Brando, and Best Supporting Actress for Saint. When accepting the statuette from Frank Sinatra in March 1955, Saint was heavily pregnant with her first child. Two days after the ceremony, she gave birth to her son, Darrell Hayden.

I think I may have the baby right here.

Hitchcock collaboration and selective Hollywood career

Following her initial success, Saint declined long-term studio contracts to focus on raising her children, giving birth to her daughter Laurette in 1958. She turned down high-profile productions, including The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit with Gregory Peck and The Rainmaker with Burt Lancaster, appearing in only seven feature films during her first decade in Hollywood. Her husband, television and stage director Jeffrey Hayden, whom she married in 1951, urged her to accept the role of secret agent Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 thriller North by Northwest. The film paired her with Cary Grant and culminated in a chase scene across the presidential sculptures on Mount Rushmore.

Transition to television and late-career roles

Saint appeared in approximately 20 feature films, working with prominent directors including Otto Preminger on Exodus in 1960, John Frankenheimer on All Fall Down in 1962 and Grand Prix in 1966, Vincente Minnelli on The Sandpiper in 1965, and Norman Jewison on The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming in 1966. As leading film parts dwindled in the 1970s, Saint transitioned into regular television work, recurring as Cybill Shepherd's mother in the 1980s detective series Moonlighting and appearing as Tom Hanks' mother in the 1986 comedy Nothing in Common. In 1990, following five prior nominations, she received an Emmy Award for her role in the miniseries People Like Us. Her later screen work included Don't Come Knocking and Because of Winn-Dixie in 2005, the superhero film Superman Returns in 2006, and Winter's Tale in 2014.

As you get older, the available roles become fewer and fewer. So I moved into television, and I am perfectly happy with it.