Joan Fontaine

Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland was born on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo City, in the then Empire of Japan, to English parents. Her father, Walter de Havilland (1872–1968), was educated at the University of Cambridge and served as an English professor at the Imperial University in Tokyo before becoming a patent attorney. Her mother, Lilian Augusta Ruse de Havilland Fontaine (1886–1975), was educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and became a stage actress who left her career after going to Tokyo with her husband. Her mother returned to work with the stage name "Lilian Fontaine" after Joan and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland achieved prominence in the 1940s. Joan's paternal cousin was Sir Geoffrey de Havilland (1882–1965), an aircraft designer known for the de Havilland Mosquito, and founder of the aircraft company which bore his name. Her paternal grandfather, the Reverend Charles Richard de Havilland, was from a family from Guernsey, in the Channel Islands. De Havilland's parents married in 1914 and separated in 1919 when she was two; the divorce was not finalized, however, until February 1925. Taking a physician's advice, Lilian de Havilland moved Joan‍—‌reportedly a sickly child who had developed anaemia following a combined attack of the measles and a streptococcal infection‍—‌and her sister to the United States. The family settled in Saratoga, California, and Fontaine's health improved dramatically during her teen years. She was educated at nearby Los Gatos High School and was soon taking diction lessons alongside Olivia. When she was 16 years old, Joan returned to Japan to live with her father. There she attended the Tokyo School for Foreign Children, graduating in 1935. Fontaine made her stage debut in the West Coast production of Call It a Day (1935) and made her film debut in MGM's No More Ladies (1935), in which she was credited as Joan Burfield. She was leading lady to Bruce Bennett (billed as Herman Brix) in a low-budget independent film, A Million to One (1937).