Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress who is best known for her starring roles in Hollywood films during the "Golden Age".
61 Facts About Joan Fontaine
2.
Joan Fontaine was the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland.
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Joan Fontaine began her film career in 1935, signing a contract with RKO Pictures.
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Joan Fontaine received her first major role in The Man Who Found Himself and in Gunga Din.
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Joan Fontaine appeared mostly in drama films through the 1940s, including Letter from an Unknown Woman, which is considered a classic.
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Joan Fontaine appeared in fewer films in the 1960s, which included Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and her final film role in The Witches, known as The Devil's Own.
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Joan Fontaine released an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978, and continued to act until 1994.
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Joan Fontaine de Beauvoir deHavilland was born on October 22,1917, in Tokyo City, in the then Empire of Japan to English parents.
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Joan Fontaine's mother returned to work with the stage name "Lillian Fontaine" after Joan and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland achieved prominence in the 1940s.
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The family settled in Saratoga, California, and Joan Fontaine's health improved dramatically during her teen years.
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Joan Fontaine was educated at nearby Los Gatos High School and was taking diction lessons alongside Olivia.
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When she was 16 years old, Joan Fontaine returned to Japan to live with her father.
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Joan Fontaine was leading lady to Bruce Bennett in a low budget independent film, A Million to One.
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Joan Fontaine next appeared in a major role alongside Fred Astaire in his first RKO film without Ginger Rogers, A Damsel in Distress.
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Joan Fontaine was top billed in the comedies Maid's Night Out and Blond Cheat then was Richard Dix's leading lady in Sky Giant.
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The film was a huge hit, but Joan Fontaine's part was relatively small.
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Joan Fontaine's luck changed one night at a dinner party when she found herself seated next to producer David O Selznick.
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Joan Fontaine endured a grueling six-month series of film tests along with hundreds of other actresses before securing the part sometime before her 22nd birthday.
19.
Rebecca, starring Laurence Olivier alongside Joan Fontaine, marked the American debut of British director Alfred Hitchcock.
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The film was released to glowing reviews, and Joan Fontaine was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
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Joan Fontaine did not win that year, but she did win the following year for Best Actress in Suspicion, which co-starred Cary Grant and was directed by Hitchcock.
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Joan Fontaine was then one of the biggest female stars in Hollywood, although she was typecast in female melodrama.
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Joan Fontaine was nominated for a third Academy Award for her performance in this film.
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Joan Fontaine starred as the titular protagonist in the film Jane Eyre that year, which was developed by Selznick then sold to Fox.
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Joan Fontaine personally considered Frenchman's Creek one of her least favorites among the films she starred in.
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Joan Fontaine returned to RKO for From This Day Forward.
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Joan Fontaine appeared in Letter from an Unknown Woman directed by Max Ophuls, produced by John Houseman and co-starring Louis Jourdan.
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Joan Fontaine was reunited with Jourdan in Decameron Nights then went to Paramount for the low budget Flight to Tangier with Jack Palance.
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Joan Fontaine began appearing on TV shows such as Four Star Playhouse, Ford Theatre, Star Stage, The 20th Century Fox Hour, The Joseph Cotten Show, and General Electric Theater.
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Joan Fontaine won good reviews for her role on Broadway in 1954 as Laura in Tea and Sympathy, playing the role originated by Deborah Kerr.
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Joan Fontaine appeared opposite Anthony Perkins and toured the show for a few months.
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Joan Fontaine was Bob Hope's leading lady in Casanova's Big Night then supported Mario Lanza in Serenade.
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Joan Fontaine was in Fritz Lang's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt at RKO.
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Joan Fontaine had a big hit with Island in the Sun having a romance with Harry Belafonte.
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Joan Fontaine had the female lead in the popular Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea at Fox.
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Joan Fontaine had a key role in Tender Is the Night at Fox.
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Joan Fontaine tried a Hammer horror film, The Witches which she co-produced.
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Joan Fontaine returned to Hollywood for the first time in 15 years in 1975 to appear in an episode of Cannon especially written for her.
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Joan Fontaine was in The Users and was nominated for an Emmy Award for the soap opera Ryan's Hope in 1980.
40.
Joan Fontaine published her autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978.
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Joan Fontaine starred in Aloha Paradise, Bare Essence, and Crossings.
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Joan Fontaine played the lead in a TV movie, Dark Crossings, replacing Loretta Young.
43.
Joan Fontaine left her hand and foot prints in front of the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on 26 May 1942.
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Joan Fontaine was a practicing Episcopalian and a member of Episcopal Actors Guild.
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Subsequently, Fontaine had to invent a name, taking first Joan Burfield, and later Joan Fontaine taking her stepfather's surname.
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Biographer Charles Higham records that the sisters had an uneasy relationship from early childhood, when Olivia would rip up the clothes Joan Fontaine had to wear as hand-me-downs, forcing Joan Fontaine to sew them back together.
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De Havilland and Joan Fontaine were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942.
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Joan Fontaine won for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion over deHavilland's performance in Hold Back the Dawn.
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Higham has described the events of the awards ceremony, stating that as Joan Fontaine stepped forward to collect her award, she pointedly rejected deHavilland's attempts to congratulate her and that deHavilland was both offended and embarrassed by her behaviour.
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Joan Fontaine tells a different story in her autobiography, explaining that she was paralyzed with surprise when she won the Academy Award, and that deHavilland insisted that she get up to accept it.
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The sisters reportedly did not completely stop speaking to each other until 1975, after their mother's funeral, to which Joan Fontaine, who was out of the country, was not invited.
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Higham records that Joan Fontaine had an estranged relationship with her own daughters, as well, possibly because she discovered that they were secretly maintaining a relationship with deHavilland.
53.
Joan Fontaine held dual citizenship; she was British by birthright and became an American citizen in April 1943.
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Outside of acting, Joan Fontaine was noted as being a licensed pilot, an accomplished interior decorator, and a Cordon Bleu-level chef.
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Joan Fontaine still had political ambitions and the 'little old ladies from Oshkosh' wouldn't approve.
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Joan Fontaine had an affair with actor and producer John Houseman after her marriage to Aherne.
57.
Joan Fontaine met Martita while visiting Incan ruins where Martita's father worked as a caretaker.
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Martita's parents allowed Joan Fontaine to become Martita's legal guardian to give the child a better life.
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Joan Fontaine promised Martita's parents she would send the girl back to Peru to visit when she was 16 years old.
60.
When Martita turned 16, Joan Fontaine bought her a round-trip ticket to Peru, but Martita refused to go and opted to run away.
61.
On December 15,2013, Joan Fontaine died in her sleep of natural causes at the age of 96 in her Carmel Highlands home.