Hollywood and Hitchcock screen star Joan Fontaine dies

 
16 December 2013

Joan Fontaine, one of the last surviving stars of the golden age of Hollywood, has died, aged 96.

The star of Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion and Rebecca died peacefully in her sleep at home in California yesterday, according to her longtime friend Noel Beutel.

Fontaine, who was born in Japan to British parents in 1917 and moved to America as a toddler, was the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland and appeared in more than 30 films with directors including Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder as well as Hitchcock.

JOAN FONTAINE Film 'ISLAND IN THE SUN' (1957) Directed By ROBERT ROSSEN 12 June 1957 CTS63142 Allstar/Cinetext/20TH CENTURY FOX **WARNING** This photograph can only be reproduced by publications in conjunction with the promotion of the above film. For Edi

She made her first stage appearance and was also signed to RKO Pictures in 1935 and took early roles in films including Quality Street with Katharine Hepburn and A Damsel in Distress with Fred Astaire.

But it was playing the second wife of Max de Winter in the adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novel Rebecca, with Laurence Olivier, that propelled her to stardom.

She was nominated for a best actress Oscar and went on to win the Academy Award a year later for Hitchcock’s Suspicion, making her the only actress to win an Oscar in a film directed by the Brit.

When she began to be offered less interesting work by Hollywood, she returned to theatre with productions including Tea and Sympathy with Anthony Perkins on Broadway.

She also worked on radio but ended her career in 1994 with the TV film Good King Wenceslas. She retired to the estate in Carmel-by-the-Sea where she died.

Fontaine, who was also a pilot – being part of the aeroplane manufacturing de Havilland family - and balloonist, was married four times and had two children, one adopted from Peru.

She suffered a strained relationship with her sister, who is now 97, once saying: “I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it.” She did.

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