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Joan Fontaine (born October 22, 1917) is a United
Kingdom|British actor|actress.  Born Joan de
Beauvoir de Havilland in Tokyo, Japan, the
daughter of Walter de Havilland, a United
Kingdom|British patent attorney with a practice in
Japan and Lillian (Ruse) de Havilland.  She is the
younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland,
both of whom attended Los Gatos High School.

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 America 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. 

When she returned to America, she followed
Olivia's lead and began to appear on stage and in
films. 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. Because Olivia was
using the family name, Joan used the name Joan
Burfield, but later took the name Fontaine from
her stepfather and became known as Joan Fontaine.
Her film debut was a small role in No More Ladies
(1935).  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. 

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 as 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. 


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. During the 1960s, she
continued her stage appearances in several
productions, among them Private Lives, Cactus
Flower and an Austrian production of The Lion in
Winter. Her last theatrical film was The Witches
(1966), which she also co-produced. She has made
sporadic television appearances throughout the
1970s and 1980s and was nominated for an Emmy for
the soap opera Ryan's Hope in 1980.

Among her other talents, Miss Fontaine has been a
licensed pilot, a champion ballonist, an expert
rider, a prize-winning tuna fisherman, and a
hole-in-one golfer, a Cordon Bleu chef and a
licensed interior decorator.

She published her autobiography No Bed of Roses in
1979.

Miss Fontaine has been married four times - to
actors Brian Aherne (1939-1945), William Dozier
(1946-1951),  Collier Young (1952-1961) and
magazine editor Alfred Wright, Jr. (1964-1969).
She has one daughter from her union with Dozier.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at
1645 Vine Street.

==Filmography==
*No More Ladies (1935)
*Quality Street (1937)
*The Man Who Found Himself (1937)
*You Can't Beat Love (1937)
*Music for Madame (1937)
*A Damsel in Distress (1937)
*Maid's Night Out (1938)
*A Million to One (1938)
*Blond Cheat (1938)
*Sky Giant (1938)
*The Duke of West Point (1938)
*Gunga Din (1939)
*Man of Conquest (1939)
*The Women (1939)
*Rebecca (1940) 
*Suspicion (1941)
*This Above All (1942)
*The Constant Nymph (1943)
*Jane Eyre (1944)
*Frenchman's Creek (1944)
*The Affairs of Susan (1945)
*From This Day Forward (1946)
*Ivy (1947)
*Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
*The Emperor Waltz (1948)
*You Gotta Stay Happy (1948)
*Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948)
*Born to Be Bad (1950)
*September Affair (1950)
*Darling, How Could You (1951)
*The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952
*Something to Live For (1952)
*Ivanhoe (1952)
*Decameron Nights (1953)
*Flight to Tangier (1953)
*The Bigamist (1953)
*Casanova's Big Night (1954)
*Hollywood Mothers and Fathers (1955) (short
subject)
*Serenade (1956)
*Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)
*Island in the Sun (1957)
*Until They Sail (1957)
*A Certain Smile (1958)
*Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961)
*Tender Is the Night (1962)
*The Witches (1966)
*Busby Berkeley (1974) (documentary)
*All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story (1982)
(documentary)

==Sources==

Fontaine, Joan. No Bed of Roses. Berkley
Publishing Group, 1979. ISBN 0425050289

Current Biography 1944. H.W. Wilson Company, 1945.


==External link==
*http://www.classicactresses.com/joanf.html Joan
Fontaine at Classic Actresses
*imdb name | id=0000021 | name=Joan Fontaine