Joan Fontaine Net Worth

Joan Fontaine's Quotes

• Marriage, as an institution, is as dead as the dodo bird.
• If you keep marrying as I do, you learn everybody's hobby.
• I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia [sister Olivia de Havilland] did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!
• [Before the failure of her first marriage] Too many Hollywood marriages have smashed up because husbands were Mr. Joan Fontaine. That will never happen in our marriage because I am 100% Mrs. Brian Aherne.
• [on working with Orson Welles on Jane Eyre (1943)] You cannot battle an elephant. Orson was such a big man in every way that no one could stand up to him. On the first day at 4 o'clock, he strode in followed by his agent, a dwarf, his valet and a whole entourage. Approaching us, he proclaimed, "All right, everybody turn to page eight." And we did it, though he was not the director.

Interesting Facts about Joan Fontaine

1. Younger sister of Olivia de Havilland.
2. Daughter of Lilian Fontaine.
3. Joked that the musical comedy Het meisje in de taxi (1937) set her career back four years. At the premiere, a woman sitting behind her loudly exclaimed, "Isn't she awful!" during Fontaine's onscreen attempt at dancing.
4. Attended Oak Street School in Saratoga, CA.
5. Gave birth to her only child at age 31, daughter Deborah Leslie Dozier (aka Debbie Dozier) on November 5, 1948. Child's father is her second ex-husband, William Dozier.
6. She was a licensed pilot, champion balloonist, expert rider, prize-winning tuna fisherman, a hole-in-one golfer, Cordon Bleu chef and licensed interior decorator.
7. At the age of three she scored 160 on an infant IQ test.
8. Took her stage name from her step-father, George Fontaine.
9. The only actor or actress to win an acting Oscar in a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She won Best Actress for Hitchcock's 1941 film Argwaan (1941).
10. Became pregnant twice in 1964, at the age of 46, but miscarried both times.
11. First husband Brian Aherne had a friend call her the night before their wedding to tell her he had cold feet and couldn't marry her. Joan told the friend to tell him it was too late to call it off, that he had better be at the altar the next morning to marry her, and he could divorce her afterwards if he wanted. He was there at the altar and they remained married six years, never mentioning this incident to each other.
12. Daughter Martita, born 3 November 1946, adopted 1952. Ran away in 1963. When Joan found her she was refused contact with the child on the premise that her Peruvian adoption was not valid in the US. Martita and Joan in later years wrote and talked on the phone to each other quite often. Martita also visited Joan at her home in Carmel, CA.
13. She and Olivia de Havilland are the first sisters to win Oscars and the first ones to be Oscar-nominated in the same year.
14. Head of jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1982
15. When sister Olivia de Havilland was nine years old she made a will in which she stated, "I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, since she has none".
16. Ex-sister-in-law of Pierre Galante and Marcus Goodrich.
17. Her autobiography, "No Bed of Roses" was published in 1979. Ex-husband William Dozier thought a more appropriate title should have been "No Shred of Truth".
18. Relations between she and sister Olivia de Havilland were never strong, but worsened in 1941 when both were nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. Their mutual dislike and jealousy escalated into an all-out feud after Fontaine won for Argwaan (1941). Despite the fact that de Havilland went on to win two Academy Awards of her own, they have remained permanently estranged.
19. In Italy almost all of her films were dubbed by Lydia Simoneschi. She was occasionally dubbed by Rosetta Calavetta and Renata Marini. She was dubbed once by Micaela Giustiniani in The Women (1939), once by Dina Perbellini and once by Paola Barbara in Argwaan (1941).
20. Vice-President Emeritus of the Episcopal Actors' Guild of America.