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. Animated by Marc Davis, Aurora's slender physique was inspired by actress Audrey Hepburn. 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. 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. 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. 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.Īurora 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'. Merryweather, however, was able to weaken the curse so Aurora would fall into a deep sleep instead of dying. An evil fairy named Maleficent seeks revenge for not being invited to Aurora's christening and curses the newborn princess, foretelling that she will die before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday by pricking her finger on a spinning wheel's spindle. Originally voiced by singer Mary Costa, Aurora is the only child of King Stefan and Queen Leah.

Princess Aurora, also known as Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose, is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Productions' 16th animated feature film Sleeping Beauty (1959).

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