Actress Joan Fontaine, wearing a beautiful gown, was accused by a few critics of being over-dressed in this photo. 
 
 1945 Actress Joan Fontaine, wearing a beautiful gown, was accused by a few critics of being over-dressed in this photo. AP 
 
 Joan Fontaine, an Academy Award-winning actress whose delicate beauty made her a movie star in the 1940s and who excelled at portraying romantic vulnerability in such films as Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion” and “Rebecca,” died Dec. 15 at her home in Carmel, Calif. She was 96. 
 
 An assistant to Ms. Fontaine confirmed the death to the Hollywood Reporter. 
 
 Ms. Fontaine was the younger sister of Oscar-winning actress Olivia de Havilland, with whom she endured one of the longest-running sibling feuds on record. Their rivalry began in childhood and was encouraged by their ambitious stage mother. 
 
 The rupture deepened over the decades, with spats over movie roles and the attention of powerful men such as oil magnate and film producer Howard Hughes. When de Havilland wed the five-time married novelist Marcus Goodrich in 1946, Ms. Fontaine reputedly quipped, “It’s too bad that Olivia’s husband has had so many wives and only one book.” 
 
 Ms. Fontaine, a teenager when she began her Hollywood career in 1935, was best remembered for playing elegant Englishwomen, fragile society ladies and wide-eyed innocents dominated by men. She could play chic and she could play demure. 
 
 Six years later, she earned her only Oscar, opposite Cary Grant in “Suspicion” as a rich bride uncertain whether her ne’er-do-well bridegroom is a murderer. That same year, she was pitted against her sister for the most prestigious honor in Hollywood. De Havilland was Oscar nominated for her dramatic leading role in “Hold Back the Dawn.” 
 
 In her memoir, “No Bed of Roses,” Ms. Fontaine described the tension of the awards ceremony. 
 
 “I froze,” she wrote. “I stared across the table, where Olivia was sitting. ‘Get up there!’ she whispered commandingly. Now what had I done? All the animus we’d felt towards each other as children, the savage wrestling matches, the time Olivia fractured my collarbone, all came rushing back in kaleidoscopic imagery. My paralysis was total. I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair.” 
 
 The relationship grew more strained when de Havilland won the best actress Oscar for “To Each His Own” (1946). Ms. Fontaine recalled that when she walked over to congratulate her sister at the awards fete, “She took one look at me, ignored my hand, clutched her Oscar and wheeled away.” 
 
 Years passed before they spoke again, but the truce did not hold. Ms. Fontaine said the break became permanent after their mother’s death in 1975. When she was not invited to the memorial service, Ms. Fontaine said she threatened to leak the news to the press unless she were permitted to attend with members of her family. 
 
 The two sisters had to be separated by an entire room during a 1979 Oscar winners’ reunion. A year earlier, she had told the Hollywood Reporter, “I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!” 
 
 Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born in Tokyo to English parents on Oct. 22, 1917. Her father, Walter, headed a patent firm, and her mother, Lilian, was an aspiring actress trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who pushed her daughters toward acting careers. 
 
 1 of 109 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Notable deaths of 2013 View Photos A look at those who have died this year. Caption A look at those who died last year. James Avery Actor James Avery, best known for playing Uncle Phil on the 1990s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” died in Los Angeles on Dec. 31. He was 65. Jason Merritt/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. 
 
 The de Havillands divorced when their daughters were toddlers, and the father stayed in Japan while the mother took their daughters to California. The move was prompted partly for Joan’s health; she was a frail and sickly child. 
 
 Lilian de Havilland remarried, to department-store manager George Fontaine. In her autobiography, Joan Fontaine said her stepfather made sexual overtures to her and that she ran away from home. She was equally discontent living with her father in Japan for two years and moved back to the United States in 1934 to begin her acting career. 
 
 She confronted a dilemma: What would she be called? By the mid-1930s, Olivia had taken the de Havilland name. 
 
 In Ms. Fontaine’s earliest roles, she was billed as Joan St. John or Joan Burfield. She recounted in her memoir that she met a fortune teller who advised her to choose a stage name that would end with an “e.” With no great affection for her stepfather, Fontaine was the only name she could muster. 
 
 Unlike her sister — who early on starred in the hits “Captain Blood” (1935), “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938) and “Gone With the Wind” (1939) — Ms. Fontaine was initially unable to break out of low-budget films despite occasional opportunities. As Fred Astaire’s partner in “A Damsel in Distress” (1937), Ms. Fontaine called herself “terrible” and joked that the title was apt. 
 
 The critics agreed and in 1939, RKO Pictures dropped her. She later wrote in her memoir that she also was let go because she would not participate, as was expected of starlets, in cozy retreats with male guests of the studio. She often fought for better parts and compromised by appearing in some of her best and worst films simultaneously. 
 
 Her first widespread good notices came in 1939 when she was cast in “The Women,” the all- 
 
 female catty comedy by Clare Boothe Luce and made at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. She played the “good” girl in a film that included established players such as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Paulette Goddard and Rosalind Russell. 
 
 Holding her own in “The Women” against a high-electricity cast earned her a seven-year contract with David O. Selznick, who produced “Gone With the Wind.” 
 
 After Ms. Fontaine was turned down for the role of the plain Southerner Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in that 1939 epic, she suggested her older sister for the part. De Havilland got it and was nominated for a supporting Oscar but was said to have resented the help from her younger, lesser-known sibling. 
 
 To win what she hoped would be her breakthrough role, Ms. Fontaine read the Daphne du Maurier story on which “Rebecca” was based — about the insecure wife of a brooding widower — and so identified with the part of “the second Mrs. de Winter” that she lobbied Hitchcock for the job. 
 
 “When I was a little girl unable to hold my own with those who should have been my friends, I knew the same quality of unhappiness the second Mrs. de Winter knew,” Ms. Fontaine said at the time. “I was fearful and timid. And I lived in constant horror of criticism.” 
 
 Cast opposite Laurence Olivier, she earned an Oscar nomination for “Rebecca” (1940) in a role that critics praised for her complex and expressive performance. Ms. Fontaine followed with some of her finest work: “Suspicion”; “The Constant Nymph” (1943), as a young girl in love with a mature composer (Charles Boyer); and “Jane Eyre” (1943), as the young bride opposite Orson Welles’s Rochester in a film based on the Charlotte Bronte novel. 
 
 The rest of her career was a long descent into supporting roles in mediocre fare, although she stepped out of type in several roles. including . Her films included “Frenchman’s Creek” (1944) a 19th-century romance with Arturo de Cordova and based on a du Maurier novel; the comedy “The Affairs of Susan” (1945) with George Brent; and the drama “Letter From an Unknown Woman” (1948) as a woman desperately in love with a concert pianist (Louis Jourdan). 
 
 She was a love interest in the swashbuckler “Ivanhoe” (1952) opposite Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor. 
 
 Ms. Fontaine also stepped out of type in several roles: a poisoner in the Victorian suspense drama “Ivy” (1947) with Richard Ney; a manipulative society woman in “Serenade” (1956), opposite opera singer Mario Lanza; and the chic Baby Warren in “Tender is the Night,” a tepid 1962 version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. 
 
 She said she received hate mail for playing opposite black entertainer Harry Belafonte in “Island in the Sun” (1957), a torrid drama that explored race relations. 
 
 In the mid-1960s, she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for her work with children at a New York school for the deaf. She periodically returned to acting, appearing in soap operas such as “Ryan’s Hope” and series including ”The Love Boat” and “Hotel.” 
 
 Her marriages to actor Brian Aherne, producers William Dozier and Collier Young and Sports Illustrated golf editor Alfred Wright Jr. ended in divorce. She had a daughter from her second marriage and one from her third marriage, but a complete list of survivors could not be immediately confirmed. 
 
 Ms. Fontaine was the niece of British airplane manufacturing pioneer Sir Geoffrey de Havilland and was a skillful pilot and prize-winning balloonist in her own right. She also was reportedly a Cordon Bleu chef, a licensed interior decorator and an excellent tuna fisherman. ||||| The star of the Hitchcock classics "Suspicion" and "Rebecca" famously won an Oscar in 1942 over her bitter rival -- her older sister, Olivia de Havilland. 
 
 Joan Fontaine, the polished actress who achieved stardom in the early 1940s with memorable performances in the Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion -- for which she earned the best actress Oscar over her bitter rival, sister Olivia de Havilland -- and Rebecca, has died. She was 96. 
 
 The Hollywood Reporter awards analyst Scott Feinberg spoke with Fontaine's assistant, Susan Pfeiffer, who confirmed the actress' death of natural causes Sunday at her home in Carmel, Calif. 
 
 Fontaine earned a third best actress Oscar nomination for her role in The Constant Nymph (1943). She also was notable as Charlotte Bronte's eponymous heroine in Jane Eyre (1944) opposite Orson Welles; in the romantic thriller September Affair (1950) with Joseph Cotten; in Ivanhoe (1952) with Robert Taylor; and in Island in the Sun (1957), where she plays a high-society woman in love with an up-and-coming politician (Harry Belafonte). 
 
 It was Hitchcock, with his penchant for "cool blondes," who brought Fontaine to the forefront when he cast her as the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca (1940), the director's American debut. Her performance as the new wife of Laurence Olivier in a household haunted by the death of his first wife earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. 
 
 A year later, Hitchcock placed her opposite Cary Grant in Suspicion, and she won the Oscar for her turn as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth, a shy English woman who begins to suspect her charming new husband of trying to kill her. She thus became the only actor to win an Oscar in a Hitchcock film. 
 
 Among those Fontaine beat out at the 1942 Academy Awards was her older sister, de Havilland, up for Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Biographer Charles Higham wrote that as Fontaine came forward to accept her trophy, she rejected de Havilland's attempt to congratulate her and that de Havilland was offended. (There may have been another similar incident after de Havilland won her first Oscar for To Each His Own in 1947.) The sisters, who never really got along since childhood, finally stopped speaking to each other in the mid-'70s. 
 
 De Havilland, a two-time Oscar winner, is 97 and living in Paris. 
 
 PHOTOS: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2013 
 
 Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born in Tokyo on Oct. 22, 1917, to British parents. Her father was a patent attorney who had a thriving practice in Japan. Due to the ill health of both her and Olivia, their mother, Lilian, moved them to California and pushed them into acting. 
 
 While de Havilland pursued acting, Fontaine returned to Tokyo and attended the American School. Ultimately, their parents divorced and Fontaine returned to the U.S. at age 17 to live in San Jose, Calif. As de Havilland was already having some success as an actress, Fontaine joined a local theater group and moved to L.A. 
 
 She received a screen test at MGM and was given a bit part in No More Ladies (1935), credited as Joan Burfield. After changing her last name to Fontaine (from her stepfather, George Fontaine) to avoid confusion with her sister, she signed with RKO and garnered small parts in several movies, including The Women and Gunga Din, both released in 1939. 
 
 Capitalizing on her emotional turns in Rebecca and Suspicion, Fontaine appeared in several romantic films in the '40s, including Constant Nymph (where she falls for composer Charles Boyer), Frenchman's Creek (1944), The Affairs of Susan (1945), From This Day Forward (1945) and Ivy (1947). 
 
 Fontaine moved into more mature roles in the movies and starred on Broadway opposite Anthony Perkins in Tea and Sympathy in 1954. Her last movie appearance was in The Witches (1966). 
 
 Fontaine made regular TV appearances in the late '50s and early '60s and served as a panelist on the game show To Tell the Truth from 1962-65. In 1986, she co-starred in the TV movie Dark Mansions and the miniseries Crossings. Her last credited performance came in the 1994 telefilm Good King Wenceslas. 
 
 Fontaine was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1980 for her guest-starring stint in the soap opera Ryan's Hope and served as jury president at the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival. 
 
 In 1978, she published her autobiography, No Bed of Roses, which detailed her feud with de Havilland. 
 
 Off the screen, Fontaine was a licensed pilot, an accomplished interior decorator and a Cordon Bleu-level chef who was married and divorced four times. In the '40s, she and William Dozier, the second of her four husbands, formed Rampart Productions, which oversaw her 1948 film Letter From an Unknown Woman, Billy Wilder's The Emperor Waltz (1948) starring Bing Crosby and Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948) with Burt Lancaster. 
 
 In 1939, Fontaine married British actor Brian Aherne, and they divorced in 1945. She was married to Batman TV show producer Dozier from 1946-51, to producer Collier Young from 1952-61 and to journalist Alfred Wright Jr. from 1964-69. 
 
 Duane Byrge contributed to this report. 
 
 Twitter: @mikebarnes4
– Joan Fontaine, who won the Best Actress Oscar in 1941 for her role opposite Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, died peacefully in her sleep at her Carmel, Calif., home yesterday at age 96, the AP reports. Fontaine was also nominated for Oscars for her lead roles in The Constant Nymph and Hitchcock's Rebecca; played Jane Eyre opposite Orson Welles; appeared in films by Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, and Nicholas Ray; played opposite stars including Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Crawford; and was nominated for an Emmy in 1980. She was also involved in what the AP calls "one of Hollywood's legendary feuds" with her own older sister, Olivia de Havilland, who lost out on the Best Actress to Fontaine in 1941. "I felt Olivia would spring across the table and grab me by the hair," Fontaine later wrote, according to the Washington Post. Fontaine later wrote in her memoir about a rivalry that had existed since childhood, and once told a reporter, "I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!" (De Havilland, who ended up besting Fontaine with two Oscars, is currently living in Paris, age 97, the Hollywood Reporter notes.) When de Havilland won her own Oscar in 1947, Fontaine tried to congratulate her and was rebuffed. Fontaine ultimately left Hollywood after being asked to play Elvis Presley's mother, explaining that the role simply "wasn't my cup of tea." She spent 25 years in New York, appearing in dinner theater plays and on Broadway, and appeared on TV quite a bit in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. She was married four times, and had two children. Click for more on her 71-year feud with de Havilland.