Eva Marie Saint
Eva Marie Saint as Edie Doyle and Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in "On the Waterfront" (1954).
Six decades after her breakout movie role, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Saint has continued to appear in films and on television, including the new movie, "Winter's Tale."
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan
Eva Marie Saint
Born in Newark, N.J., Eva Marie Saint studied teaching at Bowling Green State University, before pursuing an acting career in New York. She attended the Actors Studio and appeared in several live TV productions, while also modeling.
"See, I wasn't a great model. You know why? Because I smiled," Saint told CBS News' Mo Rocca. "The ladies, when they're modeling, they do that walk, and there's nothing in their face. How can they do that? And they do it beautifully. That's why they're successful. I could not do it. That's not good."
"So you had no choice but to become an actress?" Rocca asked.
"Yeah."
Saint and Hayden
Eva Marie Saint and TV producer-director Jeffrey Hayden (pictured in 2012) have been married since 1951.
For Saint, the conflict of work and motherhood was never an issue because "I made decisions. I had an agent once who wanted me to make many more movies. I said, 'I can't, I can only do one a year, if that. I have young children.' And he said. 'Well, I guess you won't be a superstar,' and I said, 'Well, I guess not.'"
"And what happened to that agent?" Rocca asked.
"Fired him."
"On the Waterfront"
After several years of acting in live TV productions and television films (including "Goodyear Playhouse," and the 1953 TV film, "The Trip to Bountiful"), Eva Marie Saint appeared in her first feature film opposite fellow Actors Studio alum Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront" (1954). Both won Academy Awards for their performances, and the film won the Oscar for Best Picture.
"On the Waterfront"
"On the Waterfront"
Saint said that during rehearsal of her walk with Brando, "I dropped the glove and Marlon picked it up and had the presence of mind to pick it up and put it on his hand. And that kept me in that scene.
"It was always a difficult scene - why she would stay and talk to this man? She didn't know anything about the opposite sex, she was a Catholic girl. And then Kazan saw this and said, 'I like that. Keep it in.'
"So when we shot it, I dropped the glove. But that's what happened. And that's why Marlon, in my mind, was one of the finest actors we've ever had.
"At some point in his life, I have a feeling he lost the joy in acting, and that was our loss - not only his loss, our loss. But that was his decision, and it's his life."
"On the Waterfront"
"That Certain Feeling"
"A Hatful of Rain"
"Raintree County"
"Raintree County"
"North by Northwest"
Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint meet aboard a train in the espionage caper "North by Northwest" (1959).
Saint told Rocca about a phone call she received from her mother after writing that she was to meet with Alfred Hitchcock about working on the film: "She said, 'Now, honey, if you are having lunch with Mr. Hitchcock, I read somewhere' - and it just floored me, because she was not into movie magazines - 'that he likes women in beige, and white gloves.' Well, I sort of live in beige, so I had a beige dress, and I had white gloves, because in New York we all had little white gloves. I still have dozens of them. So I wore them to lunch, the dress, the gloves, and I got the part."
"North by Northwest"
"I had studied years at the Actor's Studio, and you do start from within, and Hitchcock didn't work that way. He's very different from Kazan, totally different. He started from the external things, the hair, the makeup, the clothes, the bag, the jewelry, everything. But then those things helped me create the spy lady."
And, she added, "What woman doesn't want to be a sexy spy lady? Maybe not everyone does. But I thought it would be fun, yep."
Saint said Hitchock gave her three instructions for her role as the "sexy spy lady" Eve Kendall: "Lower your voice, don't use your hands, and look directly into Cary Grant's eyes at all times."
"North by Northwest"
"North by Northwest"
"Exodus"
Eva Marie Saint played a nurse to Paul Newman's Jewish militant in the 1960 film, "Exodus." Five years earlier the two had acted together on TV in a musical adaptation of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town."
Saint told Rocca it was true that director Otto Preminger took her in his arms to show Paul Newman how she should be kissed. "Can you believe that?" she laughed. "There's Mr. Blue Eyes. We know what to do, right? 'No, let me show you!' And he lies down on the grass next to me and takes me in his arms. And I'm looking at Paul, you know. It was very funny, but we made believe that he showed us. Yeah, he showed Paul Newman how to make love to the nurse!"
"I don't mean to be trivial about it," said Rocca, "but you made out with a lot of famous leading men in your career, like Brando and Cary Grant and Paul Newman and Yves Montand."
"On screen, you mean!" Saint said. "Well, why not?"
"All Fall Down"
Warren Beatty played a womanizer and Eva Marie Saint the latest object of his obsession in John Frankenheimer's "All Fall Down" (1962).
"36 Hours"
Eva Marie Saint and James Garner in "36 Hours" (1965), a wartime thriller about a plot to convince a hospitalized U.S. military intelligence officer that World War II is over, so he would spill secrets.
"The Sandpiper"
"Grand Prix"
Eva Marie Saint played a journalist who has an affair with a married French race car driver (Yves Montand) in John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix" (1966).
"He was so attractive, so attractive," Saint told Rocca. "And we had the two children over there at the time and they both had a crush, especially my daughter [who] was about eight at the time. And she fell in love. They wrote for years and years and years. It was dear.
"And the last shot of the picture, I was standing here, Yves Montand was sitting here. Suddenly, after the shot, he pulled me down on his lap and he said, 'You are my favorite lady.' And I said, 'Thank you. You should have told me before!'"
"Grand Prix"
"The Stalking Moon"
Gregory Peck reteamed with his "To Kill a Mockingbird" director Robert Mulligan for the 1968 western "The Stalking Moon," about a former Army Scout trying to protect a woman (Eva Marie Saint) and her half-Indian son from the boy's Apache father.
"Loving"
Eva Marie Saint and George Segal starred in the comedy "Loving" (1970), directed by Irvin Kerschner, about a woman and her cheating husband.
"Nothing in Common"
"Don't Come Knocking"
Eva Marie Saint played the mother of an aging movie star (played by Sam Shepard) in Wim Wenders' road movie, "Don’t Come Knocking" (2005).
"Don't Come Knocking"
"Superman Returns"
Saint and Beatty
Best Supporting Actresses
"Winter's Tale"
Eva Marie Saint plays the adult version of Willa, a character at the heart of the time-travel/romantic fantasy "Winter's Tale" (2014), directed by Akiva Goldsman.
Saint and Farrell
Eva Marie Saint
Saint and Rocca
Eva Marie Saint told Mo Rocca that unlike some celebrities, she won't be writing any tell-all book.
"If you wrote a book, it should be titled, 'How to Make It in Hollywood and Be a Normal Person,'" Rocca said.
"It would never sell," Saint replied. "Because a lot of people, when they associate you with Hollywood, they don't want to think of you as normal. They want to hear, you know, all the stuff in Hollywood!"
For more info:
Margaret Herrick Library, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan