Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar- and Emmy-winning actor whose screen work included On the Waterfront and North by Northwest, has died at 102.

Saint died Tuesday of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, surrounded by family and loved ones, her representative confirmed.

Her career moved across film, television and the stage, with Saint bringing Actors Studio training and a sharp sense of character to roles opposite some of the era’s biggest stars. In On the Waterfront, she played Edie Doyle, the grief-hardened moral center of a dockside story involving corruption and murder. In Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, she portrayed Eve, a government agent who could match Cary Grant’s wrongly pursued character move for move.

From New York television to an Oscar

Born July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, Saint grew up in Albany and Delmar, New York. She studied acting at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, graduating in 1946. The school presented her with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.

After college, Saint moved to New York City, where she studied at the American Theatre Wing and with Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio while working as an NBC page. She began appearing on television in the late 1940s and landed a recurring role as Lt. Wilma Deering in the 1950 science-fiction children’s series Buck Rogers.

Her stage work soon brought further recognition. Saint appeared on Broadway in Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful alongside Lillian Gish and Jo Van Fleet. Playing Thelma, a young traveler who shares a bus journey with an elderly woman returning to her former home, Saint received the 1954 Outer Critics Circle Special Award.

That same year, she appeared in On the Waterfront as Edie, whose brother had been violently killed on the docks. Her performance opposite Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy became an early signature role. Both Saint and Brando won Academy Awards for the film. Until her death, Saint was the oldest living Academy Award winner.

Her television work also earned major attention. She received two Emmy nominations the following year for single performances: Paddy Chayefsky’s Middle of the Night, in which she played the young mistress of E.G. Marshall’s middle-aged character, and a Producers Showcase presentation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. The latter featured Paul Newman as the young man who falls in love with Saint’s Emily, with Frank Sinatra also in the cast.

A defining run of films

Saint relocated to Los Angeles in 1956 and remained there for the rest of her life. Her 1957 films included the addiction drama A Hatful of Rain and Raintree County, which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

In 1959, she joined Grant in North by Northwest. Saint’s Eve was more than Hitchcock’s familiar “icy blonde”: She was intelligent, rebellious and firmly involved in the action, including the film’s Mount Rushmore escape. One of her most memorable lines comes after meeting Grant’s character aboard a train: “It’s going to be a long night, and I don’t particularly like the book I’ve started.”

That period also included Otto Preminger’s Exodus, which reunited Saint with Newman, and John Frankenheimer’s 1962 drama All Fall Down. The latter featured Warren Beatty, Angela Lansbury, Brandon de Wilde and Karl Malden. Although the film did not win over audiences or critics, its performances — including Saint’s — received praise.

Saint had already begun reducing her workload to raise the two children she shared with director Jeffrey Hayden, whom she married in 1951. She continued with television assignments and films including the 1964 spy thriller 36 Hours, followed by The Sandpiper in 1965, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming in 1966 and the 1966 racing drama Grand Prix, co-starring James Garner.

An enduring television and stage career

Television became the main focus of Saint’s later career. Her projects included the 1981 TV movie The Best Little Girl in the World with Jennifer Jason Leigh, an early film to address anorexia nervosa. She returned to the big screen after more than a decade in 1986’s Nothing in Common, playing the mother of Tom Hanks’ character.

Saint won an Emmy in 1990 for portraying a wealthy, narcissistic woman in the NBC miniseries People Like Us, adapted from Dominick Dunne’s novel. She later appeared on Frasier as the mother of Roz Doyle, played by Peri Gilpin. Her additional Emmy-nominated work included the 1978 Hallmark Hall of Fame production Taxi!!! and ABC’s 1977 Western miniseries How the West Was Won.

Other television credits ranged from Fatal Vision, The Last Days of Patton and My Antonia to the 1996 Titanic miniseries and Open House. She also had a recurring animated role in The Legend of Korra in 2012. Her later films included Because of the Winn-Dixie, Superman Returns, Winter’s Tale and her final film, 2019’s Mariette in Ecstasy.

Saint’s stage career included The Lincoln Mask, Duet for One, First Monday in October, Summer and Smoke, Desire Under the Elms, The Rainmaker, Candida, The Country Girl and a production of Death of a Salesman with Judd Hirsch. She and Hayden also produced a 2006 Los Angeles staging of August Wilson’s Fences, directed by Hayden, and regularly performed A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters.

The couple produced the PBS documentaries Primary Colors: The Story of Corita, narrated by Saint, and Children in America’s Schools with Bill Moyers, for which they won an Emmy.

At the 90th Academy Awards in 2018, Saint presented the Oscar for Best Costume Design. Reflecting on Hayden’s death after 65 years of marriage, she told the audience, “I’m older than the Academy. Plus four months, maybe five. I’m very proud of that. Just keep moving.”

Hayden died in December 2016. Saint is survived by their children, Darrell and Laurette; grandchildren Eli, Tyler, Molly and Stella; and great-grandchildren Arlo and Finley.