While several stars have played Disney’s animated characters in live action, only a few have had the honor of being crowned a Disney princess.
Elle Fanning’s Aurora was the first of the Disney princesses to get the live-action treatment in 2014’s Maleficent. The film followed the events of 1959’s Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of Maleficent, played by Angelina Jolie. The adaptation also put a new spin on the fairy tale by having Aurora and her animated foe form a surrogate mother-daughter bond.
Fanning and Jolie reprised their characters in 2019’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, which saw Aurora become Queen of the Moors and marry her true love, Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson).
“I think a lot of Disney films, also, when the sequel comes, they expect the princess to then be in armor and have a sword and fight and, like, ‘Oh, that makes her strong,’” Fanning told Good Morning America about Aurora’s evolution while promoting the sequel in August 2019. “And, of course, there are princesses that it’s necessary. … Aurora is a fighter but in a different way. I think there’s a strength in her femininity and softness.”
Scroll down to see how Disney’s animated princesses compare to their live-action counterparts:
