In Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent is the sorceress who curses Princess Aurora.
Maleficent places the curse after being excluded from Aurora’s christening celebration. She declares that Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel spindle and die on her sixteenth birthday. The good fairy Merryweather softens the curse so that Aurora instead falls into an enchanted sleep and can be awakened by true love’s kiss.
The character was voiced by Eleanor Audley, who also voiced Lady Tremaine in Cinderella. Marc Davis supervised Maleficent’s animation, giving her a tall, angular silhouette, black-and-purple costume, and flame-like magic. The 1959 animated film later inspired a separate live-action interpretation starring Angelina Jolie, but that version tells a substantially different story.