Eva Marie Saint

Eva Marie Saint died of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, according to a family spokesperson quoted by The Hollywood Reporter and the Los Angeles Times. She was 102.

She had celebrated her 100th birthday on July 4, 2024, with four generations of family, and her 102nd birthday in July 2026. At her death she was described as the oldest living Academy Award winner. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and the Los Angeles Times published obituaries the same day.

She is survived by her son Darrell and daughter Laurette, four grandchildren, Eli, Tyler, Molly and Stella, and two great-grandchildren, Arlo and Finley. Her husband, Jeffrey Hayden, died in 2016. Funeral or memorial arrangements had not been made public at the time of writing.

Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, the younger of two daughters of John Merle Saint and Eva Marie (Rice) Saint. Her father was a research chemist for B.F. Goodrich and her mother was a teacher, and both parents were Quakers.

The family settled in Delmar, near Albany, New York. At Bethlehem Central High School she played field hockey and was a cheerleader, and she graduated in 1942. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a teacher there predicted a brilliant acting future not for Eva Marie but for her older sister, Adelaide.

Saint followed her sister to Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where she first majored in elementary education with plans to teach. On a dare she auditioned for the campus production of the comedy Personal Appearance and won the lead role of a Hollywood siren. "Something started in my mind that got me thinking, 'This was really exciting,'" she later said, and she switched her major to drama.

At Bowling Green she joined the Delta Gamma sorority and the theatre honorary fraternity Theta Alpha Phi and served on the student council. She graduated in 1946. The university later named the Eva Marie Saint Theatre in her honour and gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.

In New York she continued her training at the Actors Studio, studying alongside Karl Malden, Rod Steiger, Julie Harris and Ben Gazzara.

Live television and Broadway: Saint began as an NBC page and tour guide, earned 10 dollars applauding off camera on The Borden Show in 1946, and appeared on the early NBC program Campus Hoopla. She modeled, played small radio soap roles such as Rosemary and Young Dr. Malone, and in 1947 was cast in Mister Roberts on Broadway before being reduced to understudy. She became a fixture of live drama on Studio One, One Man's Family and the Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, earning Emmy nominations for Paddy Chayefsky's Middle of the Night and the 1955 musical Our Town with Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra. Her 1953 role as Thelma in Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful, opposite Lillian Gish, moved from television to Broadway and won her a Theatre World Award.

On the Waterfront: Elia Kazan and Sam Spiegel had her improvise with Marlon Brando and cast her as Edie Doyle. The 1954 film won eight Academy Awards, and Saint won Best Supporting Actress for her film debut, along with a BAFTA nomination for Most Promising Newcomer. She was paid 7,500 dollars for the role.

Hollywood stardom: She starred in That Certain Feeling (1956) with Bob Hope, A Hatful of Rain (1957), which brought Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations, and Raintree County (1957). Alfred Hitchcock then cast her as Eve Kendall in North by Northwest (1959) opposite Cary Grant and James Mason, reshaping her screen image. The 1960s brought Exodus, All Fall Down, 36 Hours, The Sandpiper, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Grand Prix and The Stalking Moon, and in 1970 she drew some of her best reviews for Loving opposite George Segal.

Television and stage: After Cancel My Reservation (1972) she largely left film, working in television movies and miniseries and on stage, including The Lincoln Mask (1972) and First Monday in October (1978 to 1979) with Henry Fonda on Broadway. She was nominated for Emmys for How the West Was Won (1977) and Taxi!!! (1978), played Cybill Shepherd's mother in Moonlighting (1986 to 1988), and won the Emmy in 1990 for People Like Us. Other television work included Fatal Vision, The Last Days of Patton, Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair, My Antonia and a 1999 episode of Frasier.

Later films: She returned to cinema in Nothing in Common (1986), then appeared in I Dreamed of Africa (2000), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Don't Come Knocking (2005), Superman Returns (2006) as Martha Kent, and Winter's Tale (2014). She voiced the elderly Katara in The Legend of Korra from 2012 to 2014, and in 2021 performed with Marisa Tomei in an episode of The Pack Podcast.

Saint met the director and producer Jeffrey Hayden on the New York subway, and they married on October 28, 1951. They were married for 65 years until his death in December 2016. She often said family came before career.

Their son, Darrell, was born two days after she accepted her Oscar in March 1955, and they also had a daughter, Laurette. She took the children with her on location for films such as Exodus and Grand Prix. She told Moving Pictures Magazine in 2006 that "Family always came first," and she insisted to Otto Preminger that she would not leave her young children behind to make Exodus.

She lived for many years in Los Angeles, enjoyed daily walks and was a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. She turned 100 on July 4, 2024, surrounded by four generations of her family.

Saint was raised by Quaker parents and spoke of a grounded, family centred life. She said she never wanted to be a superstar, fired her agent in the early 1970s when he pushed for more work than she wanted while her children were young, and chose roles she cared about over a bigger film career.

She was an early advocate for road safety in the age of the mobile phone, creating and distributing her own bumper sticker that read "Get Off The Phone Or Get Off The Road." She supported the Motion Picture and Television Fund and the Epilepsy Foundation of Los Angeles, and served on the Academy's Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship committee. Asked about long life, she advised, "Go with the flow," and credited walking, staying active and family for her longevity.

Saint is one of the few performers to win an Oscar for a debut film role, and her Edie Doyle and Eve Kendall remain two of the most studied performances of 1950s American cinema. North by Northwest ranks 40th on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American movies and became a blueprint for the modern spy thriller.

Her career also traced the history of television itself, from kinescope era live drama to network miniseries and animation, and her stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for both film and television reflect that range. For a generation of younger viewers she was Martha Kent or the voice of Katara. When she died at 102 she was celebrated as the oldest living Academy Award winner and one of the last links to Hollywood's Golden Age. Much of her memorabilia is held by the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library, and Bowling Green State University keeps her name on its campus theatre.

• Academy Award, Best Supporting Actress, On the Waterfront (1955 ceremony)
• Primetime Emmy Award, Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Special, People Like Us (1990)
• Theatre World Award and Outer Critics Circle Special Award, The Trip to Bountiful (1954)
• BAFTA nominations: Most Promising Newcomer (On the Waterfront) and Best Foreign Actress (A Hatful of Rain)
• Golden Globe nomination, Best Actress in a Drama, A Hatful of Rain
• Further Emmy nominations for Middle of the Night, Our Town, How the West Was Won and Taxi!!!
• Two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for motion pictures and television (1960)
• Golden Boot Award for contributions to westerns (2007)
• King Vidor Award, San Luis Obispo International Film Festival (2004)
• Lifetime Achievement Award, Bowling Green State University (2018)
• TCM Star of the Month for her 100th birthday (July 2024)

Her 1955 acceptance speech, given in New York while she was heavily pregnant, is preserved by the Academy and widely shared online. She hosted the TCM documentary The Making of North by Northwest in 2000, appeared in the documentaries Broadway: The Golden Age (2003) and Broadway: Beyond the Golden Age (2011), and gave extended interviews to Robert Osborne at the TCM Classic Film Festival in 2010 and 2014. In 1949 Life magazine profiled her as a struggling young television actress, and her appearance in On the Waterfront is referenced in the lyrics of Lloyd Cole and the Commotions' 1984 song Rattlesnakes. Her 2018 Oscars appearance, at 93, became one of the night's most shared moments.