Joan Fontaine Biography: From Hollywood Golden Age to Oscar Glory

Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo, Japan. At age 15, she met actress May Robson and adopted her mother’s maiden name, Fontaine, to distinguish herself from her sister, actress Olivia de Havilland.

In 1935, she made her stage debut in Kind Lady and Call It a Day. While performing, she was discovered by Jesse Lasky and invited to appear in No More Ladies (1935) for RKO. The following year, she played a role in A Damsel in Distress (1937), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but the film underperformed both critically and commercially. After more than ten film appearances and little success, her RKO contract was not renewed in 1939.

During a Hollywood party, Fontaine met producer David O. Selznick, who offered her a screen test for Rebecca (1940), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film was a major success and earned her an Academy Award nomination. She won the Oscar for Best Actress in Suspicion (1941) and received another nomination for The Constant Nymph (1943).

By the 1950s, Joan began stepping away from cinema, focusing on business ventures in agriculture and taking occasional roles on television and Broadway. Her final screen appearance was in the 1994 TV film Good King Wenceslas.

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Carla Marinho Leal

Writer, traveler and above all, curious about many subjects. She has studied cinema since 2002 and is a Specialist in Cinematographic Studies from UNICAP. Founder of the blog Purviance and the website Cinemaclássico. She loves Charles Chaplin, Raj Kapoor and constantly browses films from all over the world.

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