Cinderella (Disney character)
Cinderella is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Productions' animated film Cinderella (1950). In the original film, Cinderella is voiced by American singer and actress Ilene Woods. For the sequels and subsequent film and television appearances, Woods was replaced by American actresses Jennifer Hale and Tami Tappan, who provide the character's speaking and singing voices.
Cinderella
Cinderella (1950)
Cinderella from Charles Perrault's fairy tale
- Ilene Woods
(1950 film) - Kath Soucie
(Disney Parks) - Jennifer Hale
(1999–present) - Tami Tappan
(singing in Cinderella III) - Karen Strassman
(Mickey Mouse) - Susan Stevens Logan
(studio singing voice)
- Lily James
(2015 film) - Eloise Webb (child)
(2015 film) - Brandy Norwood
(Descendants) - Morgan Dudley (young)
(Descendants)
Her Royal Highness, Princess Cinderella
Scullery maid (former)
- Unnamed father (dies in prologue)
- Unnamed mother (dies in prologue)
- Lady Tremaine (stepmother)
- Drizella and Anastasia Tremaine (stepsisters)
Chad Charming (Descendants)
Chloe Charming (Descendants)
The King (father-in-law)
In the wake of her father's untimely demise, Cinderella is left in the care of her cruel stepmother and jealous stepsisters, who constantly mistreat her, forcing Cinderella to work as a scullery maid in her own home. When Prince Charming holds a ball, the evil stepmother does not allow her to go. Cinderella, aided by her kind Fairy Godmother and equipped with a beautiful silver gown and a unique pair of glass slippers, attends, only to have to leave at midnight when the Fairy Godmother's spell is broken.
Reception towards Cinderella has been mixed, with some film critics describing the character as much too passive, one-dimensional, and less interesting than the film's supporting characters. Other critics found her endearing, charming, and timeless. Woods' vocal performance has also been praised. Cinderella has nonetheless become one of the most famous and recognizable princesses in the history of film. She is also the second Disney Princess. With her iconic glass slippers, silver gown, hairstyle, and transformation, one of the first on-screen makeovers of its kind, the character has been established as a fashion icon, receiving accolades and recognition from InStyle, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour and Oprah.com, as well as footwear designer and fashion icon Christian Louboutin, who, in 2012, designed and released a shoe based on Cinderella's glass slippers. Lily James played a live-action version of the character in the 2015 live action adaptation of the original 1950 film.
Characteristics[edit]
Cinderella is a young woman with medium-length strawberry-blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair complexion. After her father dies, she is forced into servitude in her own home and is tormented by her evil stepmother, Lady Tremaine, and two stepsisters, Anastasia and Drizella. Lady Tremaine's hatred stems from the fact that Cinderella is more beautiful than her own daughters. Despite this, she maintains hope through her dreams and remains a kind, gentle and sweet person. She has faith that someday her dreams of happiness will come true and her kindness will be repaid. Cinderella is shown to have a down-to-earth attitude, but she is also a daydreamer. For example, in "Sing Sweet Nightingale", she becomes distracted with the bubbles, allowing Lucifer to smudge the floor she was cleaning. Also, after hearing that the Grand Duke is traveling the kingdom with the missing slipper, she dreamily dances back to the attic humming the song she heard at the ball. She is also shown to have a sarcastic side and a sharp wit.
With the help of her animal friends, she fixes up an old party dress of her mother's so she can attend a royal ball. However, when her evil stepsisters brutally tear the dress apart, she is heartbroken and fears that her dreams will never come true until her Fairy Godmother appears, restoring Cinderella's hope by transforming her torn homemade dress into her now-iconic sparkling, silver gown with a glittering crystalline puffy bustle, a delicate laced white petticoat, and puffy cap sleeves. Her hair is worn up in a French twist supported by a silver headband with diamond earrings, a black choker, silver opera gloves and glass slippers.
Her look was probably inspired by 1950s French haute couture, while her torn dress is clearly inspired by Salvador Dalì and Elsa Schiaparelli's Tear dress.[15]
As a servant, she wears her hair down in a ponytail, held in place with a light blue ribbon, a white scarf, and wears a brown dress with light blue sleeves, a white apron, and black flats.
Reception and legacy[edit]
Critical response[edit]
Although the film has garnered critical acclaim,[36] Cinderella herself has attracted mostly mixed reviews in modern times.[37][38] Variety disliked the character, describing her as "colorless."[39] Calling her an "oppressed drudge," Empire panned Cinderella, describing both her and Prince Charming as "bland and colourless characters - particularly when compared to Beauty and her Beast."[40] The New York Times' Bosley Crowther similarly wrote, "The beautiful Cinderella has a voluptuous face and form—not to mention an eager disposition—to compare with Al Capp's Daisy Mae." However, criticizing her role and personality, Bosely opined, "As a consequence, the situation in which they are mutually involved have the constraint and immobility of panel-expressed episodes. When Mr. Disney tries to make them behave like human beings, they're banal."[41]
Film4 negatively described Cinderella as "one-dimensional."[42] Criticizing her design, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "If there is an obvious difference between Cinderella and such predecessors as Pinocchio and Snow White, it's in the general smoothing-out of the character's appearances," concluding, "Snow White herself looked fairly bland, but the other characters in the first decade of Disney animation had a lot of personality in their faces. They were allowed to look odd. Cinderella seems to come right out of its time, the bland postwar 1950s," likening the character's flawless design to that of a "Draw Me girl."[43] Concerned about the negative effects Cinderella's passivity could possibly induce upon children, Nell Minow of Common Sense Media expressed, "Cinderella is the quintessential passive heroine rescued by a male character ... so discussions about her meekness might be in order."[44] About.com's Laurie Boeder simply described Cinderella as "blah."[45] Desi Jedeikin of Smosh included the character in the website's "8 Fictional Characters That Are Horrible Role Models For Girls" list, explaining, "I'm like so happy that Cinderella found true love with a rich stranger who rescued her from her horrible life. But wouldn't it have been better if she did it for herself?"[46] Additionally, critics have also expressed favoritism towards Cinderella's supporting cast of animal characters, particularly the comic interaction and dynamic between her pet mice Jaq and Gus and her stepfamily's pet cat Lucifer, often preferring them to Cinderella herself while noting ways in which the heroine is constantly being "upstaged."[47]
Among Cinderella's positive reviews, Michael Scheinfeld of TV Guide drew similarities between the character and Belle from Beauty and the Beast (1991), writing, Cinderella holds up better because the heroine seems timeless in her courage and resourcefulness, a closer cousin to Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast than to other fairy tale protagonists."[48] Hailing Cinderella as "the most famous and beloved princess of all time," HowStuffWorks' Vicki Arkoff defended the character, writing, "highly sympathetic Cinderella is endlessly kind, patient, hard-working, and unassuming -- no matter how cruelly she is treated by her exaggerated, cartoonish foes." Arkoff elaborated, "Unlike Disney's passive, naive Snow White, Disney's Cinderella is a princess who decides to take charge and change her life for the better, rather than just wait for things to happen that might solve her problem."[49] Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes' general consensus reads that, in addition to "The rich colors, sweet songs, adorable mice," the "endearing (if suffering) heroine make[s] Cinderella a nostalgically lovely charmer."[36] Jennifer Lee, Disney's chief creative officer, said in 2023 that the character helped her in times being bullied in middle school recalling, “I had a very, very difficult three years, and I would come home and put Cinderella on when I would do homework, because to me, it seemed like she was so mistreated and she held on to herself” while also adding, "For anyone who’s gone through that, it’s hard. You believe the noise, and she never did."[50]
Woods herself has collected widespread acclaim for her performance. Variety wrote, "Ilene Woods, as Cinderella’s voice, uses a sweet soprano."[39] Craig Butler of AllMovie opined, "Ilene Woods makes a marvelous Cinderella, her voice a combination of girlishness and sophistication; she also possesses a serenity and assurance which makes one feel she is more in control of her life than might be guessed by her surroundings."[51] At the time of Woods' death, animation critic and historian Charles Solomon told the Los Angeles Times, "one of the things about her performance is the warmth she gave the character. As soon as she began to speak, her voice meshed with Marc Davis' animation to create a heroine you liked instantly."[13]
Lily James' portrayal as Cinderella in the live-action film adaptation was generally well-received by critics. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal commended James for her performance.[52] Los Angeles Times' Betsy Sharkey wrote that James makes the character "seem as if the sweet and spirited young maiden is infused with an inner glow."[53] Richard Corliss of Time said that James created a version of the character that is "both classic and modern."[54] Lawrence Toppman of The Charlotte Observer wrote that James played the character, "with the right mixture of composure and pluck."[55] The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney wrote that James brought "unaffected sweetness" to the role and also had "lovely chemistry" with her co-star Richard Madden, who played the Prince.[56]
Accolades[edit]
Cinderella has since become one of the most famous, recognizable and popular princesses, both fictional and non-fictional, of all-time.[57][58] According to the San Antonio Express-News, Cinderella is one of the ten most famous princesses of all-time.[59] In 2013, Cosmopolitan ranked the character the ninth greatest Disney Princess.[60]
In 2003 Woods received a Disney Legends award for her role as the voice of Cinderella. In 2010, she died at the age of 81 of Alzheimer's disease.[61] In an interview with Starlog in 2006 Woods said, "I love the idea that after I’m gone, children will still be hearing my voice [as Cinderella].”[62] In 2013, Film School Rejects recognized Woods as one of "7 No-Name Actors Who Had Iconic Roles", ranking the actress first and writing, "Woods ... really set the bar high, as she managed to audition for the part of Cinderella without even realize she had done it."[63]
Lily James' performance as Cinderella in the 2015 live-action film earned her nominations for the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress – Sci-Fi/Fantasy and the award for "Favorite Movie Actress" at the 2016 Kids' Choice Awards.[64][65] She also won the 2015 Breakthrough Award at the Harper's Bazaar Women of the Year Awards.[66]
Cultural impact[edit]
Culturally, Cinderella has had a profound influence on the fashion industry. According to Sarah Osman of Young Hollywood, "Cinderella’s gown in this film is so iconic that it's become canon that Cinderella wears a light blue dress to the ball."[67] To coincide with the release of the diamond edition of Cinderella in 2012, French footwear designer Christian Louboutin created and designed a contemporary rendition of the character's iconic glass slipper. In an interview with The Express Tribune, Louboutin said that Cinderella is "not only an iconic character when it comes to beauty, grace and fairytale love, but also shoes." The shoes are described as "made of delicate lace [instead of glass] to give them a look of transparency, and adorned with butterfly designs at the vamp and atop the Swarovski-crystal covered heel," completed by Louboutin’s signature red soles. Only twenty copies of the shoes were manufactured.[68] In 2014, Entertainment Weekly ranked Cinderella tenth in its article "Disney Princesses: Ranking Their Hairdos -- and Don'ts!", writing, "The lowly maid's typically rage-inducing bangs somehow develop an almost stately character once the rest of her follicular baggage has been swept into an updo closely resembling a perky butt."[69]
At the 86th Academy Awards in 2014, Kenyan actress and Best Supporting Actress recipient Lupita Nyong'o donned "a light blue Prada gown."[70] Subsequently, the media responded by drawing similarities between Nyong'o's dress and Cinderella's ballgown. Cosmopolitan wrote that Nyong'o "took a cue from Disney with a blue iridescent gown and matching headband a la Cinderella,"[71] while the Daily News similarly opined "channeled another Disney princess for her Oscars gown."[72] Acknowledging the comparisons, Nyong'o's stylist Micaela Erlanger described the actress' appearance as "Lupita + Cinderella=Lupitarella."[73] Additionally, several critics have deemed Nyong'o's success a "Cinderella story."[74][75] According to MTV, several other Academy Award attendants wore similar outfits that were reminiscent of Disney characters in addition to Nyong'o.[76]