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Joan Fontaine
| Biography |
* Born: Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland
A delicately beautiful blonde leading lady, born to British parents in the Orient, Joan Fontaine is the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland (who she has supposedly many feuds with).
She moved to the US in 1919 and made her screen debut with a bit part in No More Ladies (1935), billed as Joan Burfield.
She achieved stardom in the early 1940s with memorable roles and performances in two Alfred Hitchcock films: Rebecca (1940), opposite Laurence Olivier, and Suspicion (1941), opposite Cary Grant, which earned her a Best Actress Oscar.
While her subsequent roles, though capably played, sometimes failed to make the best use of her talents, she continued as a star until the late 1950s and made intermittent film appearances thereafter. Fontaine's better starring vehicles include the wartime love story This Above All (1942), the elaborate costumer Frenchman's Creek (1944) and the haunting Max Ophuls period romance, Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948). Although often cast as a shy English rose type, Fontaine managed to occasionally vary the formula with more spirited roles in films like The Affairs of Susan (1945) and parts as schemers in Ivy (1947) and Born to Be Bad (1950).
Fontaine was married to actor Brian Aherne from 1939 to 1945, producer William Dozier from 1949 to 1951, producer Collier Young from 1952 to 1961 and journalist Alfred Wright Jr..
She currently resides in the US and still signs autographs for admirers who write to her. As she is no longer affliated to a studio, for a small fee to cover postage and photograph costs she sends out autographed photos. A small price to pay to get an autographed item from a living legend!
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