Eva Marie Saint, 93, is an Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress who has starred in more than 20 films, including “On the Waterfront,” “North by Northwest” and “Because of Winn-Dixie.” In March, she presented the Oscar for Best Costume Design. She spoke with Marc Myers.
I originally wanted to be a third-grade teacher. My mother had taught in school, and my third-grade teacher, Miss Nish, was a big inspiration. But one night during my sophomore year at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University, my life changed.
At a Delta Gamma sorority dinner, Dr. Elden Smith, head of the drama department and husband of my sorority adviser, suggested I try out for a play. It was a comedy called “Personal Appearance.”
Dr. Smith wanted me to play the role of a Hollywood actress. I knew nothing about drama, but I accepted the challenge. I auditioned and won the role. Then I tried out for the next play and the next one.
By the time I played Rosalind in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” during my junior year, I had an awakening. I found I enjoyed being around other actors and watching sets being built backstage. And I loved playing other people and inventing their personalities. Acting wasn’t that different from teaching.
I was born in New Jersey and grew up first in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, N.Y., and then Bayside. My mother, Eva Marie, was a terrific seamstress. She made everything my older sister, Adelaide, and I wore as children.
My father, John Merle, was a credit manager at BF Goodrich. He often was on the road. Eventually, he was transferred to Albany, so we moved there when I was in third grade.
In Albany we lived downstairs in a two-family duplex. We had a yard in the back with a knotted rope hanging from a tall tree. I loved swinging on it, and I can still let out a Tarzan yell.
At the end of fourth grade, we moved to Elsmere, an Albany suburb. Behind our house were thick woods. I often retreated back there to a favorite rock by the creek to watch the squirrels and listen to the birds. I admired the stillness and quiet.
On my 9th birthday, my parents gave me a square gold pin with my initials. I adored that pin and wore it everywhere, even while playing at a nearby farm. One day, I returned home and noticed my pin was gone. I froze. I couldn’t bear to tell my parents.
I returned to the farm the next day and climbed the haystack where I had been playing. On top, I began lightly brushing away hay looking for the pin. A ridiculous effort, but about 20 minutes later, there it was. I couldn’t believe it.
Every Nov. 11, on Armistice Day, my mother took my sister and me out for the day. My father had been awarded a Purple Heart in World War I, and I assumed he wanted to be by himself. One year I forgot something and went back inside to get it. There, I heard my father crying. Even now my heart almost stops thinking about that morning. It was the day he remembered his lost buddies.
At the end of fifth grade, we moved a few blocks to Delmar, where I went to junior high and high school. We had a beautiful two-story house close enough to school that my sister and I could walk.
My parents loved taking my sister and me to the movies. Whenever we returned, I went straight to the mirror in my room. I liked to watch myself act out scenes from the films.
After college, in 1946, I moved to New York to study at the American Theatre Wing and the Actors Studio. In 1953, I was cast with Lillian Gish in a live TV performance of “The Trip to Bountiful.” Later that year, Miss Gish and I were in the Broadway production. The play lasted seven weeks, but at some point, film director Elia Kazan came to see it. He asked me to audition for a film role.
At Kazan’s office, he had me improv a scene. He said Marlon Brando was going to knock on the door and I was to do everything possible to keep him from entering. I tried, but eventually Marlon made it in and we started to dance. Kazan saw something in my vulnerability and our chemistry. I was cast as Edie opposite Marlon in “On the Waterfront.”
Today, I live in a duplex condo in West Los Angeles. My late husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, and I moved here 30 years ago after raising our two children in a large house in Mandeville Canyon. My favorite room is my husband’s office downstairs, where I do most of my computer work and reading.
I still have the gold pin I rescued from the haystack. I keep it in a little box along with my mother’s wedding ring and my father’s medals. Whenever I see the pin, I’m reminded how determined I was that day, when the odds of finding it were pretty slim. What seems impossible has never discouraged me from trying.