Eva Marie Saint dies at 102: Oscar winner and Hitchcock star

Eva Marie Saint died Tuesday of natural causes, according to a press release reported by Vanity Fair. She was 102.

Saint's 60-year Hollywood career produced just 22 theatrical features. Even if she had stopped at age 35 after five films, she would still have a legendary resume: an Academy Award for her first movie and two of the most celebrated films ever made, On the Waterfront and North by Northwest.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Saint studied acting at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. A theater there now carries her name. She trained at the Actors Studio in New York and started on television in 1947, working her way up from an NBC page to bit parts to dramatic lead.

"My first role was applauding off camera," she told Vanity Fair in 2012. "Then the next week, I was on camera... applauding."

On Broadway, she starred opposite silent-film legend Lillian Gish in Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful in 1953. Her television work was so strong she earned the nickname "the Helen Hayes of television." She received two Emmy nominations in 1955 and finally won the TV prize in 1990 for the miniseries People Like Us.

Saint was 30 when she made her film debut opposite Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront in 1954. She played Edie Doyle, a blue-collar woman who begins a tentative romance with Brando's dockworker Terry Malloy. The role won her the Oscar for best supporting actress.

Alfred Hitchcock cast her in 1959's North by Northwest as Eve Kendall, the seductive spy opposite Cary Grant. Vanity Fair reports that Hitchcock dismissed Saint's earlier roles as "kitchen-sink" parts and set out to remake her into a sleek blonde. He took her shopping at Bergdorf Goodman in New York and had her cut the waist-length hair that had been her trademark.

"He just somehow knew I'd be right as the sexy spy lady," Saint said in 2012.

Her leading men formed a who's who of classic Hollywood: Bob Hope, Montgomery Clift, Warren Beatty, Yves Montand, Richard Burton, Gregory Peck, George Segal, Jackie Gleason, Tom Hanks, and Sam Shepard.

Later in her career, fans were more likely to catch her on TV. She played Cybill Shepherd's mother on Moonlighting and Roz's mother on Frasier. She also had a recurring voice role on the anime series The Legend of Korra in 2012.

One reason she worked less was a remarkably stable family life. She married television director Jeffrey Hayden in 1951. They remained married for over 60 years until his death in 2016. They had two children who survive her.

Saint never retired, but her late film appearances were rare enough to feel like events. She played Martha Kent in 2006's Superman Returns and appeared in 2014's Winter's Tale.

"I would love to do something interesting," she told Vanity Fair at 88, "but I look at what I've done, and it's hard to take less."