Olivia de Havilland, photographed in Paris on June 25, 2016 COURTESY OF ANDREW CHULACK
BY PETER MIKELBANK 07/06/2016 AT 11:30 AM EDT
For most of her career, two-time Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland was embroiled in a rivalrous feud with younger sister Joan Fontaine.
Now, the woman who celebrated her 100th birthday last Friday opens up to PEOPLE about their prolonged estrangement, as she describes Fontaine as "brilliant and very gifted," but essentially flawed.
"She was a brilliant person, very gifted and, alas, [had] an astigmatism in her perception of both people and situations, which could cause and did cause great distress in others," she tells PEOPLE of Fontaine, who died in Dec. 2013 at the age of 96.
"I was among those and eventually this brought about an estrangement between us which did not change in the last years of her life."
Their rivalry first came to public attention at the 1942 Oscars, where both competed in the Best Actress category. De Havilland, who had previously been nominated two years earlier for her role as Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind - she lost to costar Hattie McDaniel - found herself nominated once again, this time as Best Actress for her role in Hold Back The Dawn.
Fontaine, who received her second Oscar nomination that same year, for Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, went on win the statuette.
Ultimately, de Havilland garnered a total of five career Oscar nominations and two Best Actress awards - for To Each His Own and The Heiress.
Over the years, authors and Hollywood experts have offered various reasons for the feud. Some root it in their childhood - which de Havilland described as tender and Fontaine as difficult - and their mother favoring one sister over the other. Other stories claim the sisters were jealous over men or each other's successes.