Joan Fontaine, the coolly beautiful actress who won an Academy Award for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" and who became almost as well-known for her lifelong feud with her famous older sister, Olivia de Havilland, died Sunday. In addition to winning an Academy Award as best actress for "Suspicion," Ms. Fontaine was also nominated as best actress for her role in Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (1940) and, three years later, for Edmund Goulding's "The Constant Nymph." Rivalry with sisterShe gave her Oscar-winning performance as the threatened wife in "Suspicion," opposite Cary Grant, in 1941, the same year for which de Havilland was nominated for "Hold Back the Dawn" - a head-to-head sibling competition that had the Hollywood press buzzing. All the animus we'd felt toward each other as children, the hair-pullings, the savage wrestling matches, the time Olivia tried to fracture my collarbone, all came rushing back in kaleidoscopic imagery. For a time, Joan lived with her sister and mother in Hollywood, but the sisters' rivalry deepened as Olivia's acting career met with early success. Besides Dozier, whom she divorced in 1951, Ms. Fontaine was married to and divorced from actor Brian Aherne, producer-screenwriter Collier Young and journalist Alfred Wright Jr.
Reported by SFGate 20 hours ago.
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