Which Disney princess’ film was the first to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture? Belle.
Belle’s film, Beauty and the Beast, became the first animated movie ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The 1991 Disney feature received the nomination at the 64th Academy Awards, where it competed against live-action films including The Silence of the Lambs, which won.
The nomination was historically important because animated films had traditionally been recognized mainly in music, song, or technical categories. Beauty and the Beast also earned nominations for Best Sound and Best Original Song, while winning Oscars for Alan Menken’s score and the song “Beauty and the Beast.”
A frequent mix-up involves The Little Mermaid, which helped launch Disney’s modern animation renaissance and earned several Oscar nominations, but was not nominated for Best Picture. Beauty and the Beast remained the only animated Best Picture nominee while the category had five slots. After the field expanded to ten nominees, Pixar’s Up became the second animated film nominated in 2009. The question asks for the princess, so Belle is the appropriate answer; the nominated film itself is Beauty and the Beast.