Joan Fontaine (1919~ )

joan fontaine

Joan Fontaine

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!

REBECCA

In her ball costume in this Hitchcock classic, and tempted to suicide by Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers:
"Why don't you go? Why don't you leave Manderley? He doesn't need you. He's got his memories. He doesn't love you -- he wants to be alone again with her. You've nothing to stay for. You've nothing to live for really, have you? Look down there. It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you? Why don't you? Go on. Go on. Don't be afraid."

With Laurence Oliver in REBECCA

A poster from Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940) with Laurence Olivier. Fontaine received the first of her three career Best Actress Oscar nominations for her role as "the second Mrs. de Winter" in this, the Best Picture of 1940.

"Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive,

and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me.

Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden,

the supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.

The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done.

But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it.

Nature had come into her own again,

and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers,

on and on while the poor thread that had once been our drive.

And finally, there was Manderley. Manderley, secretive and silent.

Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of those walls.

Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy,

and suddenly it seemed to me that light came from the windows.

And then a cloud came upon the moon and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face.

The illusion went with it.

I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of a past about its staring walls.

We can never go back to Manderley again.

That much is certain.

But sometimes, in my dreams,

I do go back to the strange days of my life which began for me in the south of France..."

--the second Mrs. de Winter.

More Memorable Quotations:

"I can tell by the way you dress you don't care a hoot how you look." --Beatrice.

Memorable Quotations:

"You're just about the stupidest man I ever met." --as Lady Alyce in A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS (1937).
"By the time you read this, I may be dead..." --as Lisa Berndl in LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948).
"Tell me, when you climb up the mountain, what then?" --as Lisa Berndl in LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948).
"I know nothing happens by chance. Every moment, every step is measured." --as Lisa Berndl in LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1948).
"Does it make any difference, having an aim in life?" --as Mavis Norman in ISLAND IN THE SUN (1957).
"You know what they say about me? 'Poor Mavis Norman. Always getting into trouble. Always picking the wrong man.'" --as Mavis Norman in ISLAND IN THE SUN (1957).

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