Paige O'Hara is an American actress, singer, and painter. O'Hara began her career as a Broadway actress in 1975 when she portrayed Della in The Gift of the Magi. In 1991, she made her motion picture debut in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, in which she voiced the film's heroine, Belle. Following the critical and commercial success of Beauty and the Beast, O'Hara reprised her role as Belle in the film's two direct-to-video follow-ups, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997) and Belle's Magical World (1998), and for cameo appearances in Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) and Once Upon a Studio (2023).
O'Hara in 2019
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.
