When casting for the role of Aurora in Maleficent I don’t think Disney could have found a better actress to play the role, than Elle Fanning. Not only is she completely gorgeous but she is sweet, bubbly and exactly what I would expect Sleeping Beauty to look like if she were a real person.
Last week myself, along with 24 other bloggers, had the chance to sit down with Elle Fanning to talk to her about her role in this new Epic Disney film. I have to tell you that her laugh is contagious and she is very sweet. It was such a pleasure to have the chance to talk with her about her thoughts on Maleficent.
So what did Elle think about taking on the role of a Disney princess?
It was my dream. When anyone asks what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was little, I would say, “A Disney princess,” ’cause that’s the ultimate goal in life, I think for any young girl. And especially Sleeping Beauty. She was always my favorite one. When you’re little you see which ones you look like the most and she was the one that I looked like the most. So I would go to Disney store and I would buy her clothes and her shoes, so to get to play this is, it’s really the dream.
I’m not sure about you but I would feel an intense amount if pressure playing one of Disney’s most iconic princesses. It was interesting to hear what Elle thought when she was asked about feeling any pressure living up to Sleepy Beauty’s standards?
Yeah, I watched the animated movie so many times and it’s like you wanna do it justice because I feel like that Sleeping Beauty, they’ve already done it so perfectly, you know. I have to live up to that. So I did watch the animated film right before I started filming just because I thought it was in, she has a certain physicality ’cause she’s drawn, you know, drawn a certain way. And, and she holds her hands in this, you know, with these little gestures and her posture and her feet.
So I tried to bring that charm to the role. But also in ours there is a little more to her ’cause she’s not just a delicate princess, you know. She has some strength and she actually shows real emotion. She gets sad and feels betrayal because a lot of secrets are hidden from her. So it was nice in ours that we could make her more human than just the cartoon.
The movie is amazing and there are so many incredible scenes. Elle was asked what her favorite scene was to shoot and here is what she had to say.
To shoot? Mine was when I pricked my finger on the spindle ’cause it’s so iconic. I mean, when I think about the original, that’s the scene I think of. And especially to film that scene, it was the very last day of filming that we did. So I was like, oh gosh, and kind of everything was building its way up to that monumental moment and I felt I wanted to do it right, you know, everything has to be a certain way. ‘Cause that scene impacted me a lot when I was little.
It scared me more than Maleficent did because of the way the lights were and it looked like Aurora was morphing into Maleficent, with that green and purple light. So I was like, “We have to have those lights.” So they changed and made it more of a green hue and then I had the trance.
To me I am always curious to hear about how an actor or actress got their part. Did they have to go through a long audition, wait months to hear back or was it a pretty easy process. Elle gave us a little inside scoop on her audition process and where she was when she found out that she got the part?
Yeah, it’s funny because it all happened really fast. A lot faster than those things normally do. I heard there was gonna be a Maleficent movie which you it’s from the villains point of view you so there has to be an Aurora in there. So I was like, oh my gosh, I hope I get to be that. And they asked me to come in with the director Rob, for a meeting. So I met with Rob and Linda, and Linda was the writer.
And so I went and had a meeting with them and we just talked, I think they just wanted to get a sense of me, kind of what I was like. And they didn’t describe much of the story because they wanted me to, they kind of already decided that they were gonna give me the part. So they told me in there that I got it. And then they handed over the script. So, handing over the script was like the coronation of everything. I read the script in the car and got motion sickness reading it while driving home. But I did not stop. I just kept going. I was so excited.
When you think of a Disney movie you normally can picture a princess or villain singing throughout. Elle Fanning didn’t get to sing in Maleficent so we wondered if she felt bummed out that she got a princess role with no singing?
I know! I was thinking about that! I was like, I’m surely gonna get to sing the song, you know? But I think that for this one it just didn’t happen. Also for, Lana Del Rey, she sings that song in our trailer, and it’s so perfect. Our movie’s more gothic, you know? So it’s nice to have her haunting voice, a different take on it than just the original one.
Elle Fanning was such a sweet girl and does an amazing job playing Aurora in Disney’s Maleficent which opens in theaters everywhere May 30th!
*Thanks so much to Elle Fanning and Disney who provided my travel and accommodations while in LA. Also to Louise from MomStart.com for taking the photos for us!