Joan Fontaine

About Joan Fontaine

Joan Fontaine (born October 22, 1917) is an Academy Award-winning British actress in American films. She became an American citizen in April 1943.

She was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in Tokyo, Japan, the younger daughter of Walter de Havilland, and the former Lilian Augusta Ruse, a British actress known by her stage name of Lilian Fontaine, who married in 1914, and divorced when Joan was two. Walter was a British patent attorney with a practice in Japan.

She is the younger sister of actress Olivia de Havilland, from whom she has been estranged since 1975; both attended Los Gatos High School and the Notre Dame Convent Roman Catholic girls school in Belmont, California.