Actors - Joan Fontaine

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	Actors - Joan Fontaine

Joan Fontaine (born October 22 1917) is a Japanese-born British actress, who became an American citizen in April 1943.

Early Life

She was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in Tokyo, Japan, the younger daughter of Walter de Havilland, and the former Lilian Augusta Ruse, a British actress known by her stage name of Lilian Fontaine, who married in 1914. Fontaine's father, Walter, was a British patent attorney with a practice in Japan.

She is the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, from whom she has been estranged for many years; both attended Los Gatos High School and the Notre Dame Convent Roman Catholic girls school in Belmont, California.

At the age of two, Joan's parents divorced. Joan was a sickly child and had developed anemia following a combined attack of the measles and a streptococcic infection. Upon the advice of a physician, Joan's mother moved her and her sister to the United States where they settled in the town of Saratoga, California.

Joan's health improved dramatically and she was soon taking diction lessons along with her sister. She was also an extremely bright child and scored 160 on an intelligence test when she was three. When she was fifteen, Joan returned to Japan and lived with her father for two years.

Stage Career

When she returned to the U.S., she followed Olivia's lead and began to appear on stage and in films, but was refused permission by their mother, who allegedly favored Olivia, to use the family name. So Joan was forced to invent a name (Joan Burfield, and later Joan Fontaine, utilizing her own mother's former stage name).

Joan made her stage debut in the West Coast production of Call It A Day in 1935 and was soon signed to an RKO contract.

Film Career

Her film debut was a small role in No More Ladies (1935). She was selected to appear in a major role alongside Fred Astaire in his first RKO film without Ginger Rogers: A Damsel in Distress
(1937) but audiences were disappointed and the film flopped.

She continued appearing in small parts in about a dozen films but failed to make a strong impression and her contract was not renewed when it expired in 1939, the same year she married her first husband, the late British actor Brian Aherne. That marriage was not a success.

Her luck changed one night at a dinner party when she found herself seated next to producer David O. Selznick. She and Selznick began discussing the Daphne Du Maurier novel Rebecca, and Selznick asked her to audition for the part of the unnamed heroine. She endured a grueling six-month series of film tests, along with hundreds of other actresses, before securing the part.

The film marked the American debut of British director Alfred Hitchcock. In 1940, the film was released to glowing reviews and Joan was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She didn't win that year (Ginger Rogers took home the award for Kitty Foyle) but she did win the following year for Best Actress in Suspicion (1941), which was also directed by Hitchcock.

Dysfunctional Sibling Relationship

Fontaine and her sister were each nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942. Fontaine won first for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) over de Havilland's nomination for Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Biographer Charles Higham has described the events of the awards ceremony, stating that as Fontaine stepped forward to collect her award, she had pointedly rejected de Havilland's attempts at congratulating her and that de Havilland was both offended and embarrassed by her behavior.

Several years later, de Havilland would return the favor and brush by Fontaine, waiting with her hand extended, because Olivia had allegedly taken offense at a comment Joan made about her Olivia's then-husband. He records that the sisters always had an uneasy relationship, even since early childhood, when Olivia would rip up the clothes Joan had to wear as hand-me-downs, forcing Joan to sew them back together.

Career Rise

She went on to continued success during the 1940s in which she excelled in romantic melodramas. Among her memorable films during this time was The Constant Nymph (1943), Jane Eyre (1944), Ivy (1947) and Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948). Her film successes slowed a bit during the 1950s and she also began appearing in television and on the stage. She won good reviews for her role on Broadway in 1954 as Laura in Tea and Sympathy opposite Anthony Perkins.

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