(CelebNMusic247 News) Legendary Actress Joan Fontaine Dies at 96
Ms. Joan Fontaine achieved stardom in the early 1940s with memorable performances in the Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion!
In 1942, Fontaine won an Oscar in 1942 over her bitter rival her older sister Olivia de Havilland. She died in her sleep at her home in Monterey at the age of 96.
According to awards analyst Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter who spoke with Fontaine’s assistant, Susan Pfeiffer, confirmed the actress’ death of natural causes Sunday at her home in Carmel, Calif.
Fontaine earned a third best actress Oscar nomination for her role in The Constant Nymph (1943), She also was notable asCharlotte Bronte‘s eponymous heroine in Jane Eyre (1944) opposite Orson Welles; in the romantic thriller September Affair (1950) with Joseph Cotten; in Ivanhoe (1952) withRobert Taylor; and in Island in the Sun (1957), where she plays a high-society woman in love with an up-and-coming politician (Harry Belafonte).
It was Hitchcock, with his penchant for “cool blondes,” who brought Fontaine to the forefront when he cast her as the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca (1940), the director’s American debut. Her performance as the new wife of Laurence Olivier in a household haunted by the death of his first wife earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress.
A year later, Hitchcock placed her opposite Cary Grant inSuspicion, and she won the Oscar for her turn as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth, a shy English woman who begins to suspect her charming new husband of trying to kill her. She thus became the only actor to win an Oscar in a Hitchcock film.
Read more about the late Joan Fontaine at The Hollywood Reporter…
