--- title: Sibling Rivalry: The Story of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine description: On National Siblings Day, a look at two of Hollywood's most famous -- and famously feuding -- sisters. canonical: https://time.com/3768918/joan-fontaine-olivia-de-havilland/ author: Eliza Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-10T12:00:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:04:44.551Z og:title: Hollywood’s Most Famous Sibling Rivalry og:description: On National Siblings Day, a look at two of Hollywood's most famous -- and famously feuding -- sisters. og:url: https://time.com/3768918/joan-fontaine-olivia-de-havilland/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2f1997690bb20344/69878668cd6848435709a74c/150402-fontaine-dehavilland-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1608 og:image:height: 905 og:image:alt: Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland, 1942 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Hollywood’s Most Famous Sibling Rivalry twitter:description: On National Siblings Day, a look at two of Hollywood's most famous -- and famously feuding -- sisters. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2f1997690bb20344/69878668cd6848435709a74c/150402-fontaine-dehavilland-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Hollywood’s Most Famous Sibling Rivalry > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Apr 10, 2015 12:00 PM UTC  Caption from LIFE. As successful movie stars, Joan (left) and Olivia make one of their rare appearances together in a window at Joan's home. This year they were winner and runner-up, respectively, for the Academy Award. Caption from LIFE. As successful movie stars, Joan (left) and Olivia make one of their rare appearances together in a window at Joan's home. This year they were winner and runner-up, respectively, for the Academy Award.Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Apr 10, 2015 12:00 PM UTC For three quarters of a century, the supposed feud between sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine was the stuff of tabloid dreams. Only 15 months apart, the sisters pursued the same career, competed for the same Oscars and even cozied up to some of the same men. As LIFE put it in a [1942 profile](https://books.google.com/books?id=ClAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA89&dq=joan+fontaine+olivia&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dM8aVaTbHYa-ggT82oHYAg&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=joan%20fontaine%20olivia&f=false) titled “Sister Act”: “There is no danger that sisterly affection, breaking suddenly upon them, will dampen their rivalry and the girls’ careers.” It’s no surprise, then, that when Bob Landry photographed them for that LIFE story, they appeared in only seven photographs together out of the more than hundred he shot of them. In a story that was _about_ their relationship. They might as well have been posing for two separate articles. At that time, de Havilland was 25 and Fontaine, 24\. At that year’s Academy Awards, they had gone head to head in the race for Best Actress, the first pair of siblings to compete for an Oscar. (Only one pair of siblings, Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave, has joined them in that category in the intervening years.) De Havilland was nominated for _Hold Back the Dawn_ and Fontaine for _Suspicion_. The older sister, who famously played Melanie Hamilton in _Gone With the Wind_, was known for playing “pretty and charming, naïve,” and the younger for roles that were “moody, intuitive and emotional.” LIFE’s Oliver O. Jensen described the tense moment before the envelope was opened: --- > “” --- Long before the sisters went head to head in Hollywood, they competed for attention as children. Fontaine — who took her stepfather’s name when she decided, as she [told](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/joan-fontaine-olivia-de-havilland-666087?) the _Hollywood Reporter_’s Scott Feinberg, “Two de Havillands on the marquee would be too many” — had been a sickly child. Her “bouncy and pretty” older sister was favored, scored leading roles in local plays and enjoyed picking on her, taunting, “I can but Joan can’t!” Though she was younger, Fontaine won an Oscar first and married first, famously quipping, “If I die first, she’ll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!” Her first husband, Brian Aherne, had been romantically involved with de Havilland before Fontaine, Jensen wrote, “met and seized” him for herself. De Havilland, now 98, rarely spoke about the alleged feud, save for a [1957 interview](https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=VQciAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2pkEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3292,2932089&dq=de+havilland&hl=en) in which she attributed her distance with her sister to a cutting remark Fontaine once made about her first husband. Fontaine wrote in her 1978 autobiography that her older sister rebuffed her when she tried to congratulate de Havilland for her first Oscar, which came in 1947\. In an [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9f7gjHkR9M) after the book’s release, she also spoke about differences of opinion in how to care for their ailing mother and how to memorialize their mother after her death. Fontaine said she heard about their mother’s death not from her sister but through the grapevine. When Feinberg interviewed both sisters in 2013, before Fontaine’s death in December of that year, Fontaine brushed off the rivalry that by then was so ingrained in Hollywood legend it might as well have been engraved on the Walk of Fame. “Let me just say, Olivia and I have never had a quarrel,” she told Feinberg. “We have never had any dissatisfaction. We have never had hard words.” Whether the feud was fact or fiction or, more likely, something in between, the sisters were talented, ambitious people who achieved success without relying on nepotism, and really in spite of it. Perhaps the same drive that propelled them up the Hollywood ladder wedged a small but enduring gulf between them. As Fontaine once put it, “We are not passive people in any way.” _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at_ [_@LizabethRonk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Caption from LIFE. As successful movie stars, Joan (left) and Olivia make one of their rare appearances together in a window at Joan's home. This year they were winner and runner-up, respectively, for the Academy Award. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Joan Fontaine in her film make-up and pompadour. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Olivia, here sunk in a brown study, has changed considerably. The cheery but colorless Hoopskirt Girl has given way to an understandably gloomier but much greater actress. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Joan Fontaine in natural freckles and pigtails looks very different but no less pretty and fragile than she does in her film make-up and pompadour. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. On the back terrace of their white Georgian home in Beverly Hills, Joan and her husband, Actor Brian Aherne, chat with Olivia. The Ahernes are extremely happy and domestic, like to have tea each afternoon at 4, to dress for dinner and have in Aherne's British friends. He is a licensed pilot and now helps in the West Coast Civil Air Patrol. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Her gold Oscar Statuette stands on the desk where Joan attends to the bookkeeping for the Aherne household. Maps for their frequent airplane trips cover the study walls. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Olivia De Havilland, 1942. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Joan Fontaine with her husband Brian Aherne and her dog, 1942. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Joan Fontaine, 1942. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Olivia De Havilland, 1942. Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Joan Fontaine, 1942. 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