Joan Fontaine

Joan Fontaine, born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo City in the then Empire of Japan, was a British-American actress whose career encompassed film, stage, radio, and television across five decades. She died on December 15, 2013. Her father, Walter de Havilland, had been educated at the University of Cambridge and worked as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before practicing as a patent attorney. Her mother, Lilian Augusta Ruse de Havilland Fontaine, trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and had been a stage actress before accompanying her husband to Japan. Fontaine's parents separated in 1919 and their divorce was finalized in February 1925. On a physician's recommendation, her mother relocated Fontaine and her elder sister, actress Olivia de Havilland, to the United States, settling in Saratoga, California. At sixteen, Fontaine returned to Japan to live with her father and attended the American School in Japan, graduating in 1935. Her paternal cousin was aircraft designer Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, founder of the company bearing his name and known for the de Havilland Mosquito.

Fontaine made her stage debut in a West Coast production of Call It a Day in 1935, the same year she made her film debut in MGM's No More Ladies, credited as Joan Burfield. She signed a contract with RKO Pictures, where the studio promoted her as a rising star with The Man Who Found Himself in 1937, billing her as a new RKO screen personality. That same year she appeared alongside Fred Astaire in A Damsel in Distress, and she had previously taken a small unbilled role in Quality Street starring Katharine Hepburn. Additional RKO credits from that period included You Can't Beat Love, Music for Madame, Maid's Night Out, Blond Cheat, and Sky Giant. George Stevens directed her in Gunga Din in 1939, in which she played Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s love interest, and George Cukor gave her a small role in MGM's The Women that same year.

Her career trajectory changed substantially after producer David O. Selznick cast her in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca in 1940, following a six-month audition process. The film starred Laurence Olivier and marked Hitchcock's American directorial debut. Fontaine received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for the role. The following year she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Hitchcock's Suspicion, which co-starred Cary Grant. That win made Fontaine the only actress to have received an Oscar for an acting performance directed by Hitchcock. A third nomination came for her work in The Constant Nymph in 1943, opposite Charles Boyer at Warner Brothers. She also starred as the title character in Jane Eyre, a project developed by Selznick and sold to Fox. In 1944 she appeared in Frenchman's Creek, another adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier novel.

In August 1946, Fontaine established Rampart Productions alongside her then-husband William Dozier. The company produced Ivy in 1947 and Letter from an Unknown Woman in 1948, the latter directed by Max Ophüls and co-starring Louis Jourdan. That same year she also appeared in the comedy You Gotta Stay Happy, which she co-produced through Rampart. Her contract with Selznick had ended in February 1947, and she worked primarily through Rampart thereafter. Following her role in Ivanhoe in 1952, her film career began to decline and she transitioned increasingly into stage, radio, and television work. Her Broadway career ran from 1953 to 1968 and included appearances in Tea and Sympathy and Forty Carats. Later film appearances included Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in 1961, and her final film role came in The Witches in 1966, also released as The Devil's Own. She published her autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978, and continued acting until 1994.

Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland remain the only siblings to have each won a lead-acting Academy Award. Their rivalry received extensive media coverage during the height of both their careers. Fontaine appeared in more than 45 films over the course of her career.