Eva Marie Saint Biography

A cool and intelligent blonde, Eva Marie Saint won an Oscar for her supporting role as Edie Doyle in the 1954 film On the Waterfront. Saint played the empathetic friend who encouraged Marlon Brando to stand up to the dockside racketeers who ruined his boxing career. The film won eight Oscars in all, including best actor (Brando), best director (Elia Kazan) and best picture. Eva Marie Saint also romanced a desperate Cary Grant in the 1959 Hitchcock classic North by Northwest, but took only infrequent film roles in the 1960s and 1970s, including The Sandpipers (1965, with Elizabeth Taylor) and Grand Prix (1966, with James Garner). In later years she made many appearances on television and had a regular role as Cybill Shepard’s mother in the TV series Moonlighting. She won a 1990 supporting actress Emmy for the TV miniseries People Like Us. Her other films include Nothing in Common (1986, starring Tom Hanks), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005) and Superman Returns (2006, starring Brandon Routh as Superman).