Joan Fontaine - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)

Joan Fontaine - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Actress, Producer.
October 22, 1917 - December 15, 2013 - Anglo-American actress.
Joan made her acting debut in 1935 on the theatrical stage in the production Name This Day. There she was noticed by representatives of the film company RKO, and soon the aspiring actress signed a contract with them. Since her sister Olivia began her acting career earlier, the family name de Havilland went to her. In addition, their mother did not want Joan, like her sister, to become de Havilland, and forbade her to use this surname. Therefore, Joan was forced to come up with the pseudonym Barfield, which she later replaced with the theatrical name of her mother, becoming Joan Fontaine. In the same year, she made her big screen debut in No Ladies, starring Joan Crawford.
Two years later, she appeared in the title role in the film "Girl's Suffering", where Fred Astaire first appeared on the screen in a new company, that is, without Ginger Rogers. As a result, the public did not like the film, and it failed at the box office. After that, Joan Fontaine appeared in about a dozen more films, but they all contributed nothing to her incipient film career. In addition, in 1939, she married British actor Brian Ahern, with whom nothing good came out of the marriage. In 1943, following her sister, Fontaine became an American citizen. A sharp turn in the further fate of the actress was a meeting at a reception with the famous Hollywood producer David O. Selznik. At lunch they discussed the script for Rebecca, based on the novel of the same name by Daphne Du Maurier, and Selznick invited Fontaine to try out for one of the roles in this film. As a result, Joan got not some minor role, but the main one - the second Mrs. de Winter. The film, which became the American debut of British director Alfred Hitchcock, received 11 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress for Joan Fontaine. Although the award went to Ginger Rogers that year, the role was a huge success in Joan's career. The following year, Fontaine again starred with Hitchcock in Suspicion, starring Cary Grant. Fontaine's successes caused such envy of her older sister, superstar actress Olivia de Havilland, that they have since stopped communicating. In the 1940s, the actress enjoyed great success in films, in particular thanks to roles in romantic melodramas such as "Above All" (1942), "Jane Eyre" (1944), "Ivy" (1947) and "Letter from a Stranger" ( 1948). After her divorce from Ahern in 1945, the actress was married three more times. From her second husband, producer and actor William Desir, in 1948 she gave birth to a daughter, Deborah, and also adopted a Puerto Rican, Miriam, who later ran away from home. In the 1950s, Joan Fontaine's film career gradually began to decline, after which the actress gradually moved to television, and also resumed her career in the theater. Her most successful works in big cinema in those years were roles in the films Ivanhoe (1952), The Bigamist (1953) and Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1956). In 1954, she received good reviews for her role in the Broadway production of Tea and Sympathy, where J. Fontaine has played alongside Anthony Perkins. In the 1960s, she also had notable roles in the theatrical productions of Private Lives, Cactus Blossom and Lion in Winter. Joan Fontaine last appeared on the big screen in 1966, playing the role of schoolteacher Gwen Mayfield in the British horror film The Witch. In the following years, the actress was active in television, where in 1980 she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her role in the soap opera Ryan's Hope. The last role of the actress was Queen Ludmila in the children's television movie "The Good King Wenceslas" in 1994. In 1978, Fontaine published her autobiography "No Bed of Roses" .
In recent years, Joan Fontaine has lived a quiet and secluded life in the small Californian town of Carmel, tending her garden and her two dogs. There, the actress died in her sleep at the 97th year of her life. The next day, her sister Olivia de Havilland made a short statement regarding Fontaine's death, in which she said she was shocked and saddened by her death. For her contribution to the cinema of the United States, the actress was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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Author: Jane Watson