Joan Fontaine made her mark as a coolly beautiful 1940s actress who won an Oscar 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.
Her 1978 memoir "No Bed of Roses" recounted an unhappy childhood in a broken home, a toxic and obsessive rivalry with her elder sister, and a difficult relationship with her father and stepfather, an ambivalent one with her mother.
Indeed, when her mother died, Olivia and the executor of her mother's will "had taken full charge, making all arrangements, disposing of mother's effects as well as her body without bothering to consult me."
Fontaine went on to write that although two of her ex-husbands, including actor Brian Aherne, were asked by the executor to deliver eulogies for her mother, no invitation was extended to Fontaine or her daughter Deborah.
The memoir also revisited her struggle for parts in the shadow of her successful sister [she had used her stepfather's name to avoid comparisons but was quickly found out], as well as what came after being the youngest leading lady at that time to win an Oscar.
"I have found no lasting romance, no marriage I could salvage without jeopardizing my own happiness or freedom, my own brand of integrity. My career is the result of opportunity and luck as much as anything else."
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Year | Category | Work | |
---|---|---|---|
1940 | Best Actress | Rebecca | Nomination |
1941 | Best Actress | Suspicion | Win |
1943 | Best Actress | The Constant Nymph | Nomination |
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