Eva Marie Saint: On Life Between Brando’s Babe and Superman’s Mom

Eva Marie Saint is a national treasure. Had she carved her own image atop Mt. Rushmore during North by Northwest's famous chase, it could have been a fitting tribute. In Superman Returns, Saint finds herself in familiar territory, making her mark on our collective memory opposite celluloid's most identifiable, celebrated images. A savagely shortened list of people with whom Saint has shared top billing reveals a career crafted with only the cream of collaborators: Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Charles Bronson, Warren Beatty, Karl Malden, Lee Marvin and Montgomery Clift. But despite the Oscar®, the memories and the movies, Saint's reverence is reserved for her greatest collaboration: a 55-year marriage and life adventure with acclaimed television and theatre director Jeffrey Hayden, whose own credits ("In the Heat of the Night," "Peyton Place," "Leave it to Beaver") could easily fill volumes of his own.

It was an interesting project for me, I was never bored, and it's got an incredible history behind it. Those boys wrote the first comic strip around the Depression, and then Superman just went skyward. I think things are so bad in our country and the world today; maybe Superman will take [people] out of that depression for... however long the movie is. With their popcorn and their drink, maybe they can leave this world or this planet for a while. Superman can represent someone who can take care of things, and help the needy. I wish he [had been] around at the time of Katrina. It sounds silly to think that way, but part of us wants somebody to lead us and make things better, not just in New Orleans or Iraq, but everywhere.

Although I'd never just do something without reading the script, on Superman, Bryan [Singer] sat down with me and went through it scene by scene - and just watching him go through it made it sound exciting. He had such a fix on this script. I really admire him (and he admired me; that's why I was in the meeting) and I was glad it worked out. It was so secretive. I'd read my scenes, of course, but I never read the whole movie; I was sworn to silence.

All my scenes were at the Kent Farm, in a little town called Tamworth, 45 minutes by charter plane northwest of Sydney. Where we filmed - this beautiful isolated plateau - it's like the top of the world. Nothing would grow there, and here comes Superman with, I guess, as much money as they needed, so they plant this corn there, and they had people watering it for six months. I'm about five-and-a-half [feet tall], and it was about as tall or taller than I am. There was the farm, there was the barn, and there was the corn growing like [in] Iowa.

I have scenes with Brandon when he comes home after five years, and it was right at the beginning of shooting the movie. I did a couple of extra scenes around Thanksgiving, and I saw him [then]. And let me tell you that when Brandon - when Superman - gives you a hug, it is something [laughs]. He's just so dear, and he's from Iowa, and he has a presence about him... so I think and hope it'll work.

On Superman and Brando:

Bryan put Marlon back in this one, put in some old clips, so there we are back together again for a scene. It's the family line: He's the true father of Superman and I'm the adoptive mother, so there's that connection... We come full circle.

I did refer to him once as a hummingbird, because you just felt his sensitivity - his sensitivity to life, I guess, and certainly to the other actor and to the material and to the moment at hand. A hummingbird you're in awe of and you can't really catch it, but every time I see one I wish I could get even closer. And so Brando, in that sense, is humming with all that sensitivity, and in the beginning it put me off a little bit. It felt like he understood me more than I understood myself, knew more about me than I felt I knew about myself. And after a while I just relaxed. And I'd come from the Actors Studio, we all had [in On the Waterfront], so I just relaxed and I used that.

I've never been intimidated by other actors, because I'm an actor. I'm not in awe but I certainly have respect for other wonderful actors. People ask me (here she gasps demonstratively), "Weren't you nervous opposite Marlon Brando?" But no, I was at the studio and he was a member and a fine, fine actor.

I worked mainly with Lee, not with Gadge [Elia Kazan]. Lee gives you scenes based on your basic character or personality, and he gave me scenes in the beginning where I had to cry. I'd come from a loving family but I'd never shown that side of myself; at home we'd go off to our little rooms to cry. So when he gave me that material, and I was very shy, it was like a breakthrough... like Superman leaving the Earth.

Once you've been to the Studio, it's part of your DNA, your grain and how you work. It just begins as soon as you read that script; you start thinking about your character and the subtext. People ask, "What's the difference between working for film or on stage?" Well, when you begin working on your character, it's the same; it's the exact same thing.

What I really remember is, in the emotional scenes, I remember what I was using for that moment, to get to that moment. Of course it's what we learned in the Studio, but it was interesting that I could still pinpoint almost every point of what I was thinking and what I was using... the Sense Memory work. At one point I hadn't lost anyone close; by now my whole family's gone - mother, father, sister and so on - but I'd lost a dog very early so I used that, the death of Skippy.

Hitchcock knew exactly where he wanted you, and I don't remember too much other direction. You felt that you were his spy lady, and he wanted you and no-one else in the world to play that role. With Cary [Grant], there was that certain aura on the set. I'm not agog over actors though; we're not finding a cure for cancer, we're actors. I really mean that. I am agog over musicians; when I met Zubin Mehta, I almost fell over. Artists, painters, people who do things I have no concept of doing. I felt that way about... Tennessee Williams. When we did Summer and Smoke at the Doolittle in town here, I met him and I probably lost my composure and gushed, and you don't gush over other actors. And you don't gush over Cary Grant, that's for sure, because he goes around and everyone gushes over him. Really, all the ladies [would] light up and it was unbelievable, but that was his charm because he seemed to be larger than life. But when you worked with him he was just Cary, and he was wonderful; he was very giving.

In the movie, the line we had to change was "I never make love on an empty stomach," and we had to change it to "I never discuss love..." I can't see the looping there; people who really know every second of the film say you can see the loop, but you really can't. And you wouldn't have to now. Now you would just see them making love on the screen.

I'm not prudish but I find that in some of these movies it's so explicit that it's distracting. You know that they're not really making love, and that's for sure; we know that. But the thing that I'm more incensed about is the horrible violence that goes on. I still can't watch when someone is shot in the head and you see the blood splat. I know it's fake, but there are all these poor soldiers who are dying in Iraq as we speak, and it's not on the front page, so maybe people are becoming insensitive these days to the loss of the life... Otherwise people would be on the streets screaming out against the injustice. I never want to be a part of that violence. I've never made a movie that contributes to that.

I loved The Squid and the Whale, I loved Good Night, and Good Luck, I loved Capote.

GN&GL took me back to the time in terms of "Person to Person," which Ed did. In the movie they inferred he didn't like that part of his work; in reality I don't think he minded, I think he liked it because he had such a sense of humor. We were living at 26 West 9th Street in the Village, and NBC came right after the Oscars®. And I had a skirt on and they were getting things all lined up to do the show and I had to go to the bathroom, and so I went weewee and they could hear it all the way back at the NBC Studio because they had the mikes on, and from that moment on I don't think I was as shy anymore - weewee coast to coast!

I knew about it; I wasn't involved in it. When I was making Waterfront... People allude to the fact that it sort of paralleled the squealings and naming names and this and that, and the Brando character with the stool pigeon.

That's what was so wonderful about GN&GL, because the younger people now, they just don't know about it. So the more it's discussed and analyzed, the better, because you look at the world today and something like that could happen. We have to be on guard.

Family always came first. When I made Grand Prix, they were with me. When I made Exodus, they came with me. When I was making the deal with Preminger, I told him I had a two-year-old and a five-year-old, and I said, "I can't leave them..." I said to Otto, "I'll have to bring my folks from Pennsylvania, and Jeff is coming and his mother," and Otto said, "Well, it looks like you'll have you own Exodus going!" I wouldn't have it any other way, and I never chose to do more than one movie a year.

My mother lived to be 91, I would say, "What's your secret?" and she'd say, "Just keep moving." And I read somewhere that George Burns said, "Just keep booked"; he always had something he was going to do. So just keep busy.