Eva Marie Saint, Oscar winner who seduced Cary Grant in North by Northwest, dies at 102

Eva Marie Saint, who won an Academy Award for her debut film performance and went on to play one of Alfred Hitchcock's most memorable femmes fatales opposite Cary Grant, died on October 6, 2026, at her home in Los Angeles. She was 102.

Her death was confirmed by family spokesperson Jeff Sanderson, according to Smooth Radio. No cause was given, though Saint had been in good health well into old age — she was still acting in her mid-90s.

I think I may have the baby right here.— Eva Marie Saint, accepting her Academy Award

That line, delivered from the Oscar stage in 1955, captured everything about Saint's early Hollywood story. She had been pregnant when she won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Edie Doyle in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), playing the love interest of Marlon Brando in what was her very first film. Her son, Darrell, was born two days after the ceremony.

The role came about through one of cinema's more charming auditions. Kazan, who had already accepted Saint into the prestigious Actors Studio training centre, invited her to improvise a scene with Brando — she was told to stop a young man from entering her apartment.

All I know is that Marlon got in the door and turned on the music. We started dancing. He flicked my skirt. Kazan saw the sparks fly, and that's how I got the part.— Eva Marie Saint, Los Angeles Times, 2001

What followed the Oscar win surprised Hollywood. Rather than capitalise on overnight stardom, Saint stepped back from films to raise her son — appearing in just seven films in her first decade in the industry. It was her husband, TV and stage director Jeffrey Hayden, who eventually persuaded her to take the role that would cement her place in cinema history.

In Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), Saint played Eve Kendall, a glamorous, duplicitous spy who seduces Cary Grant's character before falling for him — a performance widely regarded as one of the thriller's defining elements. The film remains one of Hitchcock's most celebrated works.

Saint was born in 1924 in Newark, New Jersey. She had initially considered following her mother into teaching before discovering acting at college. After moving to New York, she worked through a slow start in soap operas and dramas before her Actors Studio breakthrough.

Her career stretched across seven decades. On television, she won new audiences as Cybill Shepherd's mother in the hit sitcom Moonlighting, and took home an Emmy Award for the 1990 miniseries People Like Us. As recently as 2021 — in her mid-90s — she voiced a role in the audio play The Bus Ride, part of The Pack Podcast, playing Marisa Tomei's aunt.

Saint was married to Jeffrey Hayden for 65 years, until his death in 2016. They had two children — Darrell and Laurette, born in 1958 — and four grandchildren.

Why it matters — Saint's death closes the book on one of Hollywood's last direct links to the golden age of American cinema — a performer who won the industry's highest honour on her very first attempt, then spent seven decades proving it was no accident.

Reported by collider.com, hollywoodreporter.com, smoothradio.com, rockandpop.cl, telegraph.co.uk, nytimes.com