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Aurora, also known as Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose, is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Productions' animated film Sleeping Beauty (1959). Originally voiced by singer Mary Costa, Aurora is the only child of King Stefan and Queen Leah. An evil fairy named Maleficent seeks revenge for not being invited to Aurora's christening and curses the newborn princess, foretelling that she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel's spindle and die before sunset on her sixteenth birthday. Merryweather, one of the three good fairies, weakened the curse so Aurora would only sleep. Determined to prevent this, three good fairies raise Aurora as a peasant in order to protect her, patiently awaiting her sixteenth birthday—the day the spell can only be broken by a kiss from her true love, Prince Phillip. Aurora is based on the princess in Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty", as well as the heroine who appears in the Brothers Grimm's retelling of the story, "Little Briar Rose". For several years, Walt Disney had struggled to find a suitable actress to voice the princess and nearly abandoned the film entirely until Costa was discovered by composer Walter Schumann. However, Costa's southern accent nearly cost her the role until she proved that she could sustain a British accent for the duration of the film. In order to accommodate the film's unprecedentedly detailed backgrounds, Aurora's refined design demanded more effort than had ever been spent on an animated character before, with the animators drawing inspiration from Art Nouveau. Animated by Marc Davis, Aurora's slender physique was inspired by actress Audrey Hepburn. With only 18 lines of dialogue and equally few minutes of screen time, the character speaks less than any speaking main character in a feature-length Disney animated film. When Sleeping Beauty was first released in 1959, the film was both a critical and commercial failure, discouraging the studio from adapting fairy tales into animated films for three decades. Aurora herself received negative reviews from both film and feminist critics for her passivity and similarities to Snow White, and would remain Disney's last princess until The Little Mermaid's Ariel debuted 30 years later in 1989. However, Costa's vocal performance was praised, which inspired her to pursue a full-time career as an opera singer to great success. Chronologically, Aurora is the third Disney Princess. Actress Elle Fanning portrayed a live-action version of Aurora in the film Maleficent (2014), a retelling of the 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the title character. Fanning returned to portray Aurora in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), which is set five years later. The Sleeping Beauty Castle is an attraction at Disneyland. Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant (French for "The Castle of the Beauty in the Sleeping Forest", but known more roughly in English as "Sleeping Beauty Castle") was built at Disneyland Paris. The castle was replaced by the Castle of Magical Dreams in Hong Kong Disneyland; however, the new castle still pays tribute to Aurora and the other Disney Princesses. Along with Cinderella Castle, the Castle is a main symbol of The Walt Disney Company. Development Conception and writing Filmmaker Walt Disney had long been struggling to adapt the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty" into a full-length animated film for several years, intending to base the project on both Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm's versions of the story. Disney was considering abandoning work on the film altogether until singer Mary Costa was discovered, the casting of whom as the film's heroine finally allowed the project to graduate from development to production. At the time Aurora was conceived, there had only been two prior Disney princesses: Snow White and Cinderella, the heroines of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Cinderella (1950), respectively. Disney wanted his third princess to be as different from Snow White as possible, but several strong similarities remain between the two characters and their respective stories. Gary Susman of Moviefone observed that both films feature "an evil witch jealous of a young and beautiful princess, the princess hiding out in a woodland cottage with a group of comic-relief caretakers ... and the witch putting the princess into a deathlike sleep, from which only true love's kiss can awaken her." In the original fairy tale, the princess actually sleeps for 100 years before she is finally awakened by the prince's kiss; this detail was adjusted for the film in favor of having Prince Phillip introduced earlier, and thus Aurora is awakened much sooner. In the Grimm version, the princess is destined to prick her finger at the age of 15, while Disney decided to age the character by one year. Aurora's names are borrowed from both Tchaikovsky's ballet and the Grimm fairy tale. While Tchaikovsky referred to his princess as "Aurora", the Brothers Grimm had named her "Little Briar Rose"; this ultimately inspired Disney to use both names in the film, the latter of which serves as the character's alias while she is hiding from Maleficent. Aurora was the last princess in whose conception Walt Disney himself was directly involved prior to his death. Voice Aurora is voiced by American singer Mary Costa, who was 22 years old when she was cast as the character in 1952. Costa had grown up a fan of Disney films, the first of which she saw was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As a child, Costa adored the film so much that she would imitate Snow White by parading around her house wearing a bath towel as a makeshift cape. Costa described herself garnering the role of Aurora as simply "being in the right place at the right time." The filmmakers had long struggled to cast Aurora, having been searching for the right voice for the character for three years. Disney himself had been considering to shelving the project unless a suitable voice actress was found, insisting that the same performer provide both the character's speaking and singing voices. Costa was attending a dinner party for the entertainment industry, to which she had been invited by a friend who was hoping to introduce her to some influential people, where she performed the popular standard "When I Fall in Love". The performance was heard by film composer Walter Schumann who, impressed by her vocals, approached Costa about possibly voicing Aurora and inviting her to audition the following morning. Despite doubting that she would be cast, Costa agreed to audition mostly because she wanted to meet Walt Disney. Upon arriving at the studio the next day, composer George Bruns welcomed Costa by asking her to perform a bird call, which she did successfully. However, being from Knoxville, Tennessee, Costa's strong southern accent nearly prevented her from being cast until she proved that she could sustain a fake British accent for the entire film. The filmmakers l.... Discover the K M Weiland popular books. Find the top 100 most popular K M Weiland books.