Oscar winner Joan Fontaine died Sunday night at age 96 in her home in Carmel, Calif. Her career spanned almost six decades and many say she was one of the last remaining links to Hollywood's golden era of the 1930s and 1940s.
Fontaine began her career with minor roles in movies such as A Million to One and Quality Street opposite Katharine Hepburn. While she had a successful career as an actress, she was also known for her relationships with iconic Hollywood icons including Afred Hitchcock as well as her sister and Oliva de Havilland, a bitter rival according to USA Today.
During a dinner party with famed producer David O. Selznick, he asked her to audition for a part in the adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca, that would be directed by none other than newcomer Alfred Hitchcock.
She earned an Academy Award nomination for that role and followed it the next year with a best actress win for Hitchcock's Suspicion, which co-starred Cary Grant. The award would mark the only Academy Award-winning performance of Hitchcock's entire film career.
From there, Fontaine received a third best-actress award for her role in The Constant Nymph in 1943 and had notable turns as Charlotte Bronte's heroine in Jane Eyre in 1944 along with Orson Welles as well as roles in 1950's September Affair and in 1957's Island in the Sun.
Soon her relationship with Hitchcock helped her career develop which exacerbated an intense rivalry with her older sister du Havilland. Fontaine changed her name because the family didn't want the two actresses to share a last name. In 1942 the two were up for Academy Awards. Fontaine won but her sister received two others that night. Today, they remain the only women in Hollywood to receive lead acting Oscars.
She was married and divorced four times and stayed out of the limelight to pursue her career as an accomplished interior decorator. In 1980 she was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for an appearance on the soap opera Ryan's Hope and two years later headed the jury at the Berlin Film Festival. She then came out of retirement for the 1994 Family Channel movie Good King Wenceslas.
She is survived by her two daughters.
