Eva Marie Saint’s family life at 100: meet her 2 children, plus her grandkids and great-grandkids

In 1951, before she achieved her first breakthrough with 1953’s The Trip to Bountiful, Eva married Jeffrey Hayden, a TV director and producer.

The director’s career began with his first and only feature film, 1957’s The Vintage. He then transitioned to TV, directing dozens of episodes of shows like Leave It to Beaver, The Andy Griffith Show, Burke’s Law, Batman, Magnum P.I., In the Heat of the Night, and many more, stretching all the way into the 1990s.

During a conversation with NPR, Eva recalled that the pair met on the New York City subway. “[I was] carrying a modeling book with my name, Eva Marie Saint, in gold in little letters at the bottom. And the name intrigued him.”

“He didn’t see me from the front. It was the back. Oh, and the way I walked. And that was the moment,” she remembered. Jeffrey passed away in 2016 at the age of 90, with the pair married for 65 years.

Eva and Jeffrey welcomed two children together: a son named Darrell in 1955, and a daughter named Laurette in 1958. Darrell, in fact, was born two days after Eva won her Academy Award.

Now 70, Darrell is a design instructor, former faculty member at Academy of Art University and currently the founder of Speaking of Creative, specializing in creative services and design.

Laurette, just weeks shy of her 67th birthday, started off her career as a film and TV producer, working with HBO, Lifetime Television and the USA Network before transitioning to therapy, now acting as a licensed marriage and family therapist, working with the PCH Treatment Center in Los Angeles.

Laurette was married to Miles Beller from 1985 to 2021, per her IMDb page, and they welcomed a son named Eli Beller in 1990, who is now 35 years old.

Less is known about Darrell’s marriage, although he is himself a father-of-three, to 10-year-old daughter Stella and two older kids, Tyler and Molly, both of whom are now married. Through her grandchildren, Eva also reportedly has two great-grandchildren, telling People she celebrated her 100th birthday last year with “four generations” of family.

Darrell spoke with Academy of Art Athletics in 2020 about his kids, calling his youngest daughter incredibly creative, articulate, and empathic,” and saying of his older two: “My son, Tyler, is a senior newspaper editor in Santa Barbara, and my daughter, Molly, is the vet tech at the California Academy of Sciences here in San Francisco.”