Love Interest

Character Role Analysis

Eve Kendall

Femme Fatale turned wife, bad girl turned good: that pretty much sums up Eve's trajectory in North by Northwest. To her credit—and Hitch's, we suppose—she's more than a damsel in distress, though in the end she does end up being "Mrs. Thornhill" as if marriage were her biggest accomplishment. Still, the film suggests that one reason she's a good match for Thornhill is that she's several steps ahead of him, his intellectual match in every way. Eve uses guile to get ahead, but she does so in the service of something greater than herself.