Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine died on Sunday, her longtime friend Noel Beutel said on Monday. She was 96.

    Fontaine died “very peacefully” in her sleep of natural causes, Beutel said. She was in her Carmel, California, home.

    Fontaine was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in 1916 in Tokyo, Japan, where her British father was a patent lawyer and teacher. She and her sister moved to Saratoga, California, with their mother in 1919 when her parents separated.

    Fontaine was a teenager when she began her acting career as Joan Burfield in the 1935 film “No More Ladies.” She later adopted the stage name Fontaine — the name of her mother’s second husband.

    She wrote in her 1978 autobiography, “No Bed of Roses,” that her mother, who was an actress, began encouraging the rivalry with her older sister at an early age.

    The feud* extended to their careers when both sisters were nominated for best actress Oscars in 1942. Fontaine, who was nominated for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion,” beat her sister Olivia de Havilland, who was nominated for “Hold Back the Dawn.”

    The long-standing feud with de Havilland was at such a peak during one Oscar winners’ reunion in 1979 that they had to be seated on opposite ends of the stage.

    “I was shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of my sister, Joan Fontaine ... and I appreciate the many kind expressions of sympathy that we have received,” a statement released by Olivia de Havilland said.

    Fontaine, at 23, was the youngest best actress Oscar winner at the time she was given the award for “Suspicion.” Her Oscar represents the only one ever won by a Hitchcock film.(SD-Agencies)