The Birds: Trailer for Hitchcock thriller released in 1963
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The late Oscar-winning actress first worked alongside Hitchcock when she landed a leading role in the psychological thriller Rebecca. The 1940’s film was the screenwriter’s first American project. While the film was a box office hit, Fontaine admitted she suffered “quite a lot” as an actress in a classic interview on Talking Pictures: Hitchcock’s Leading Actors.
The BBC documentary aired an unearthed interview of Fontaine in 1969 where she discussed working with Hitchcock on Rebecca.
The British-American actress explained: “He was a darling, [but] a bit formidable. He had an enormously bawdy sense of humour.
“He had a habit, whether it was conscious or not, I don’t know, but of rather keeping all his actors at loggerheads.
“So he would be the one in the middle – rather puckish.
“It was good for me because it made me suffer quite a lot and feel quite miserable all the time, and it probably came out that way on screen.”
The film stars Laurence Olivier as the brooding widower Maxim de Winter and Fontaine portrayed the young woman who becomes his next wife Mrs de Winter.
She continued: “[Hitchcock] had absolutely no nonsense about mood or meaning or any of that.
“He was telling a story and expected you to tell it with him, in absolutely common terms.
“No theories like the Actors’ Studio or anything like that.
“He made it terribly clear and I remember, finally, I had to cry one day quite and lot and I said, ‘Hitch, I just can’t cry anymore’.
“He said, ‘Well, kid what are you going to do?'”
She asked him to slap her across the face and he agreed before issuing the whack.
“The tears came streaming down my face, it was partly pain, but a great deal of gratitude for his understanding,” the actress revealed.
When the interviewer asked her why she was pleased she suffered a lot during the production of Rebecca, she explained: “I played a girl with a terrible inferiority complex, and it is better to not praise her too much.”
The actress was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the Hollywood classic.
She went on to star in another Hitchcock film called Suspicion which was released in 1941.
Fontaine featured in almost 50 films across five decades during her illustrious career.
She died at the age of 93 of natural causes in 2013.
The actress left behind her two children, Debbie Dozier and her adopted daughter Martita Pareja.
Talking Pictures: Hitchcock’s Leading Actors is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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