Stars You Forgot Voiced Characters in ‘Beauty and the Beast’: Angela Lansbury, Jerry Orbach and More
usmagazine.comTale as old as time! Beauty and the Beast was a massive success upon its release in 1991 — and the voice cast featured some major Hollywood icons.Veteran Broadway actress Paige O’Hara led the cast as Belle, while Ice Castles star Robby Benson played the Beast.
Though O’Hara was already known for her stage work when she took the role, she later said that playing Belle was the thing that truly established her career.“People might not know me, but I’ll say, ‘I am the voice of Belle,'” the Florida native told Parade in September 2016. “And then you can get charity work done, I can raise money for kids, I can utilize this in such a positive way that I would never, ever have been able to do had I just been a working actress in New York.
So, it’s enabled me to branch out and do my work and my charities and, on a selfish point, my concert career took off. It’s made me financially comfortable, so I can take time and go work with kids.”Several members of the supporting cast were already household names, but Beauty and the Beast introduced them to a whole new generation of viewers.
The late Angela Lansbury, who voiced Mrs. Potts, said that children continued to recognize her voice even 25 years after the film’s release.“I can be talking to a friend in a supermarket, and if a kid happens to be around me at the time, some little child who’s with his mom, he’ll say, ‘Mom, that’s Mrs.
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