Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine dies at 96

BritishAmerican actress Joan Fontaine, winner of an Oscar for her role in “Suspicion,” died over the weekend, her assistant told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 96.

Fontaine, a movie icon of the 1940s, passed away Sunday from natural causes at her home in Carmel, California.

The actress was a threetime nominee for an Oscar as Best Actress and was the inspiration of director Alfred Hitchcock in “Rebecca” and “Suspicion,” costarring Cary Grant.

Fontaine, born in Tokyo in 1917, was an eternal rival of her actress sister Olivia de Havilland, who starred in “Gone With the Wind” and from whom she snatched the Oscar for Best Actress in 1942.

They never got along well, fought over starring film roles, and their mutual snubs were long a hot topic of Hollywood gossip.

De Havilland, 97, lives in Paris.

Fontaine began fashioning her fame as an actress in 1937 with a role opposite Fred Astaire in “A Damsel in Distress,” but it was Hitchcock who launched her to stardom as the tormented Mrs. de Winter in “Rebecca,” costarring Laurence Olivier.

After that, roles of the brokenhearted woman belonged to her and won her another Oscar nomination for “The Constant Nymph.”

Fontaine also starred in the Orson Welles’ film of the classic novel “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte.

The actress, who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, will also be remembered for such films as “September Affair,” “Ivanhoe” and “Letter from an Unknown Woman.” Her last part was in 1966 in “The Witches.”

Fontaine was an airplane pilot and an expert chef who married and divorced four times.