Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine dies at 96

Academy Award–winning actress Joan Fontaine, who found stardom playing naive wives in Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion" and "Rebecca" and was also in films by Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Nicholas Ray, died Sunday. She was 96.

Fontaine, the sister of fellow Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland, died in her sleep in her Carmel, Calif., home on Sunday morning, said longtime friend Noel Beutel. Fontaine had been fading recently and died peacefully, he said.

Fontaine's pale, soft features and frightened stare made her ideal for melodrama, and she was a major star for much of the 1940s. For Hitchcock, she was a prototype of the uneasy blondes played by Kim Novak in "Vertigo" and Tippi Hedren in "The Birds" and "Marnie." The director said he was most impressed by Fontaine's restraint. She credited George Cukor, who directed her in 1939's "The Women," for urging her to "think and feel and the rest will take care of itself."

Fontaine appeared in more than 40 movies, including "Gunga Din," "Jane Eyre" and Max Ophuls' historical drama "Letter from an Unknown Woman." She was also in films directed by Wilder ("The Emperor Waltz"), Lang ("Beyond a Reasonable Doubt") and, wised up and dangerous, in Ray's "Born to be Bad." She starred on Broadway in 1954 in "Tea and Sympathy" and in 1980 received an Emmy nomination for her cameo on the daytime soap opera "Ryan's Hope."

"Suspicion," released in 1941, featuring Fontaine as a timid woman whose husband (Cary Grant) may or may not be a killer, brought her a best actress Oscar and dramatized one of Hollywood's legendary feuds, between Fontaine and de Havilland, a nominee that year for "Hold Back the Dawn."

The honor gave Fontaine the distinction of being the only actor or actress ever to win an Academy Award for a starring role in one of Hitchcock's many movies.

De Havilland went on to win two Oscars of her own for leading roles in 1946's "To Each His Own" and 1949's "The Heiress."

"You know, I've had a hell of a life," Fontaine once said. "Not just the acting part. I've flown in an international balloon race. I've piloted my own plane. I've ridden to the hounds. I've done a lot of exciting things.

Al Jazeera and wire services