Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Joan Fontaine

Actress

Born - 22 October 1917, International Settlement, Tokyo, Japan
Died - 15 December 2013

Fair-haired Hollywood actress, the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland and born Joan de Havilland in Japan of English parentage. After a hesitant start in films, she adopted her mother's married name (Lillian Fontaine was also an actress) and began to make her mark as vulnerable, sometimes frightened heroines, nominated twice for Oscars, as well as winning for Suspicion. As she passed 30, her features hardened, and she was seen in more businesslike roles, as bad girls and other women. After a debut in No More Ladies (1935, under the name Joan Burfield), she waited two years before making a swift ascent to the top: Quality Street (1937), Gunga Din (1939), Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), This Above All (1942), The Constant Nymph (1943), Jane Eyre (1943), Frenchman's Creek (1944), The Affairs of Susan (1945), From This Day Forward (1946), Ivy (1947), Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Born to Be Bad (1950), Ivanhoe (1952), The Bigamist (1953), Serenade (1956), Until They Sail (1957), A Certain Smile (1958), Tender is the Night (1961) and The Witches (1966), her last, though she played the queen in the TV movie Good King Wenceslas in 1994. Actor Brian Aherne was the first of her four husbands, all four marriages ending in divorce.