Joan Fontaine

Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (22 October 1917 − 15 December 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British American actress. Born in Japan to British parents, de Havilland and her older sister Olivia de Havilland moved to California in 1919. Fontaine began her career on the stage in 1935 and signed a contract with RKO Pictures that same year.

In 1941, she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her role inRebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The following year, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) making Fontaine the only actress to ever win an Academy Award in a film directed by Hitchcock. Fontaine and sister de Havilland are the only siblings to have won lead acting Academy Awards. During the 1940s to the 1990s, Fontaine continued her career in roles on the stage and in radio, television and film. She released her autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978. After a career spanning over 50 years, Fontaine made her last on-screen appearance in 1994.

Fontaine lived in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California where she owned a home, Villa Fontana. It was there that she died of natural causes at the age of 96 in 2013.

Years active1935–1994

Spouses

• Brian Aherne
  (m. 1939; div. 1945)
• William Dozier
  (m. 1946; div. 1951)
• Collier Young
  (m. 1952; div. 1961)
• Alfred Wright Jr.
  (m. 1964; div. 1969)

Early life

Joan de Havilland was born in Tokyo, Japan, to British parents. Her father, Walter Augustus de Havilland (31 August 1872 – 23 May 1968), was educated at theUniversity of Cambridge and served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney with a practice in Japan. Her mother, Lilian Augusta (née Ruse; 11 June 1886 – 20 February 1975), was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and became a stage actress who left her career after going to Tokyo with her husband. Her mother would return to work with the stage name "Lillian Fontaine" after her daughters achieved fame in the 1940s. Joan's paternal cousin was Sir Geoffrey de Havilland(1882–1965), an aircraft designer, notably of the De Havilland Mosquito, and founder of the aircraft company which bore his name. Her paternal grandfather, the Reverend Charles Richard de Havilland, was from a family from Guernsey, in theChannel Islands.

Fontaine's parents married in 1914 and separated in 1919, when Lilian decided to end the marriage after discovering that her husband used the sexual services of geisha girls; the divorce was not finalized, however, until February 1925.

Taking a physician's advice, Lilian de Havilland moved Joan—reportedly a sickly child who had developed anaemia following a combined attack of the measles and a streptococcal infection—and her elder sister, Olivia, to the United States. The family settled in Saratoga, California, and Fontaine's health improved dramatically. She was educated at Los Gatos High School, and was soon taking diction lessons alongside her elder sister. When she was 16 years old, Fontaine returned to Japan to live with her father. There she attended the American School in Japan, graduating in 1935.