Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role 1955
Eva Marie Saint On the Waterfront 1955
SEX WORKER ROLE
Eve Kendall in North By Northwest 1959
Character Is A Spy Seductress (aka Honeypot)
Eva Marie Saint in North By Northwest 1959
Early in her career, Eva Marie Saint was typecast as the actress to go to for roles that needed the plain Jane type or the waif. So it was surprising when Alfred Hitchcock insisted on casting Saint as his latest femme fatale in “North by Northwest.” The role wasn’t just any Bad Girl part. Eve Kendall was a duplicitous spy seductress and double agent. In a nutshell, Cary Grant is running from the bad guys. Saint meets with Grant’s character, seduces him, and then sends him off to be killed by the bad guys. One of them happens to be her boyfriend!
Her performance reviews were outstanding as she shed her “good girl” persona.
Variety writing:
She “shows she can be unexpectedly and thoroughly glamorous.”
The Hollywood Reporter writing:
She “turns her into an ice-covered volcano in the love passages. By endowing her with a beckoning, almost unattainable glamour.”
Watch clip from the film North By Northwest
To read more about other Oscar-winning actresses playing characters working in the sex trade industry, please continue perusing Oscar Hookers