Joan Fontaine: Movies, Awards & Box Office

Joan Fontaine (born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on 22 October 1917 in Tokyo City, then part of the Empire of Japan) was a celebrated English‑American actress whose career spanned five decades of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The daughter of English professor Walter de Havilland and stage actress Lilian Fontaine, she moved with her family to California after a childhood marked by illness and a brief return to Japan for schooling at the American School in Japan. She made her stage debut in 1935 and entered films the same year, initially billed as Joan Burfield before adopting her mother’s surname. After early supporting roles at RKO, her breakthrough arrived when producer David O. Selznick cast her in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), earning her first Academy Award nomination. The following year she won the Oscar for Best Actress for Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941), becoming the only performer to win an Academy Award for a Hitchcock‑directed acting role. Fontaine’s subsequent work included acclaimed performances in The Constant Nymph (1943), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) and the swash‑buckling adventure Ivanhoe (1952). In the 1950s she founded Rampart Productions with husband William Dozier, producing and starring in several films such as Ivy (1947) and You Gotta Stay Happy (1948). As Hollywood changed, she transitioned to Broadway, television and occasional Hollywood projects, appearing in series like Alfred Hitchcock Presents and in the cult sci‑fi film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). Beyond acting, Fontaine was a licensed pilot, a Cordon Bleu‑trained chef and an interior‑decorator, and she maintained dual British‑American citizenship after naturalising in 1943. Her later years were spent in Carmel Highlands, California, where she published her memoir No Bed of Roses (1978) and remained active in public speaking until her death on 15 December 2013 at the age of 96.