Eva Marie Saint, Oscar-Winning Hollywood Legend, Has Died At 102

A legend of Classic Hollywood has sadly passed away. Eva Marie Saint, whose star-making role in 1954's "On the Waterfront" made her an Oscar winner, died at the age of 102 at her home in Los Angeles, according to Variety. She was considered to be one of the last living legends of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and for good reason: Throughout her seven-decade career, Saint proved to be a dynamic and genre-bending actress on stage and on screen.

Saint was born in 1924 in Newark, New Jersey. Upon completing her college education at Bowling Green State University, she worked as an NBC page and eventually appeared on the game show "Campus Hoopla." From there, she began acting in other variety shows and on Broadway, earning a Drama Critics Award for her performance in Horton Foote's 1953 play "The Trip to Bountiful."

However, her major breakthrough came in the aforementioned "On the Waterfront," the influential crime drama directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando. The fact that she was able to stand on her own against a great like Brando, and oftentimes even overshadow him, is enough to cement a storied career.

And a storied career, she had. In 1959, Eva Marie Saint starred alongside the incomparable Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's classic noir thriller "North by Northwest." While she was robbed of an Oscar nomination for her performance, her work as the seductive and secretive Eve is one of the best examples of a femme fatale in cinema history. It also provided her a chance to break away from melodramatic housewife roles, which she had accumulated since the release of "On the Waterfront."

From then on, there seemed like few roles Saint couldn't do. Her filmography ranges from Biblical epics (1960's "Exodus") to Westerns (1968's "The Stalking Moon") and even comedies (1986's "Nothing in Common"). Later in her career, she began to take on fewer roles, but the ones she did accept were nothing short of perfect. In 2006, she portrayed Martha Kent in "Superman Returns," and in 2012, she became the voice of the legendary water-bender Katara in "The Legend of Korra," a continuation of "Avatar: The Last Airbender."

Saint is survived by her two children, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. She was married to producer and director Jeffrey Hayden until his death in 2016 at the age of 90. Saint will truly be missed, and we at /Film give our condolences to her friends and loved ones.