Oscar-winning star of On The Waterfront and North By Northwest dies aged 102

Eva Marie Saint, the US actress who won an Oscar for her first movie role in On The Waterfront has died aged 102, her family said.

Saint, who was still acting well into her 90s, died at her home in Los Angeles on Tuesday, family spokesperson Jeff Sanderson said.

The star won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as leading man Marlon Brando's love interest in the 1954 movie and a few years later appeared in another classic, Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest, opposite Cary Grant.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1924, Saint wanted to follow her mother into teaching before getting into acting in college.

She moved to New York and, after a slow start, began landing parts in soap operas and dramas, one of which ran for two years.

Her big break came when she auditioned before director Elia Kazan and was accepted into the Actors Studio training centre, which shaped a generation of method-actor stars.

Kazan invited her to try out for the female lead in On The Waterfront by improvising a scene with Brando.

She was told to try to stop a young man from entering her apartment.

She told the Los Angeles Times in 2001: "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."

Saint was pregnant with her first child when she collected the Academy Award from Frank Sinatra, uttering the memorable winners' speech: "I think I may have the baby right here."

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Her son, Darrell, was born two days later and a daughter, Laurette, was born in 1958.

She became a star overnight following the Oscar win, but astonished Hollywood by turning down plum roles in favour of taking time off to look after her new son.

In her first decade in Hollywood, Saint appeared in just seven films and credited her husband, TV and stage director Jeffrey Hayden, with persuading her to star in Hitchcock's North By Northwest - the 1959 thriller in which Saint plays a spy who seduces Grant, but ends up falling for him.

In the 1970s and 1980s, she won new fans as Cybill Shepherd's mother in the hit sitcom Moonlighting and won an Emmy for the 1990 miniseries People Like Us.

In 2021, aged in her mid-90s, she played Marisa Tomei's aunt in the audio play The Bus Ride, part of The Pack Podcast.

Saint was married to Hayden for 65 years, until his death in 2016.

(c) Sky News 2026: Oscar-winning star of On The Waterfront and North By Northwest dies aged 102