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. 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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). 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. 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.
– 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.