Belle is a fictional character in Walt Disney Pictures' animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991). Voiced by actress and singer Paige O'Hara, Belle, the book-loving daughter of an eccentric inventor, yearns to abandon her predictable village life in return for adventure. When her father Maurice is imprisoned by a cold-hearted beast in an enchanted castle, Belle offers her own freedom in exchange for her father's, and gradually learns to love the Beast despite his outward appearance.
Screenwriter Linda Woolverton based Belle on actress Katherine Hepburn's performance in Little Women (1933).
English actress Emma Watson portrays Belle in the 2017 live-action film.
Anneliese van der Pol as Belle in the stage musical
Belle, as she appears at the Disney Parks.
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the 1756 fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, while also containing ideas from the 1946 French film also of the same name directed by Jean Cocteau. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise and produced by Don Hahn, from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton.
Theatrical release poster by John Alvin
Upon seeing the initial storyboard reels in 1989, Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg ordered that the film be scrapped and started over from scratch.
A frame from the "Beauty and the Beast" ballroom dance sequence. The background was animated using computer generated imagery which, when the traditionally animated characters are composited against it using Pixar's CAPS system, gives the illusion of a dollying film camera.
