Eva Marie Saint, the Oscar-winning actress who starred in classic Hollywood films including On the Waterfront and North by Northwest, died Tuesday, her publicist said. She was 102 years old.

In his seven-decade career the ever-present Saint caught the eye of influential filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock and Elia Kazan, building a legendary resume in films as well as television, which even earned him an Emmy.

Saint died of natural causes at home in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and loved ones, his representative Jeff Sanderson said.

Saint’s performance in On the Waterfront was her film debut, and earned her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Kazan is a crime drama widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, featuring an all-star cast including Marlon Brando, who also received an Oscar for his role.

The 1954 film catapulted Saint, who played the ethereal foil to Brando’s seething macho boxer, to Hollywood stardom.

She went on to star opposite Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s masterpiece North by Northwest.

Saint was considered a surprising choice to play the Hitchcock blonde, double agent femme fatale who seduces Grant.

But she called it off, though she never worked again with the Englishman, who was notorious for putting his leading ladies through hell and controlling his actors down to the last detail.

“He worked with me on the outside,” he said later.

“My hair, my makeup, my shoes, my jewelry, my purse, my gloves, everything. And from creating that exterior for me, she gave me the feel of a female spy.”

Timeless performance

Saint’s storied career also included work with director Otto Preminger, when he starred opposite Paul Newman in 1960’s “Exodus.”

Two years later she was the love interest of Warren Beatty in John Frankenheimer’s “All Fall Down”.

With Hollywood at his feet, Saint could have been “a contender” for superstardom — to echo the most famous line from “On the Waterfront” — but instead chose to step back to raise his family with director Geoffrey Haden.

In fact her oldest son, Darrell, was born two days after she won the Oscar.

The brilliance of Eddie’s saintly incarnation, whose brother is being lured to his death by Brando’s character, has been seen by critics as the stand-out performance of a film once revered for its male roles.

The restrained saint couldn’t have been more different from Brando’s grumblingly intense method.

“He was lovely – really lovely, but a bit creepy,” she later said of her enigmatic co-star.

“I felt like he could see right through me,” she told Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in 2013.

More than half a century later, Saint returned to the big screen as Superman’s adoptive mother in the 2006 blockbuster “Superman Returns,” when she was in her early 80s.

And she was still busy in the mid-’90s, playing a small part in the supernatural fantasy “Winter’s Tale” alongside Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, and excelling as a mother in the 2019 nun drama “Marriage in Ecstasy.”

But after first developing his acting chops in live television dramas, TV remained his preferred medium. She won an Emmy in 1990 for her portrayal of a wealthy widow in the acclaimed miniseries “People Like Us.”

65 years of marriage

Saint was born on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey, to Quaker parents, whom he credits with developing a sense of discipline.

He enrolled at Bowling Green State University with plans to become a teacher but dropped out with a degree in dramatic arts after discovering a passion for theater.

Saint trained at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York and then at the Actors Studio—the home of method acting—which Kazan co-founded.

A rarity among Hollywood couples, her and Hayden’s marriage lasted 65 years until her death in 2016.

With two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Saint said his longevity has brought added depth to his work.

“The longer you live, the smarter you become, because you’ve been around, you’ve seen things.

“You go through different emotional experiences in your life, and hopefully, you understand things better,” he told TCM.

“And it makes you a better actress.”

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