Who was the supervising animator for Rapunzel in Tangled?

Glen Keane was the supervising animator for Rapunzel in Tangled. He was a veteran Disney animator who helped develop the project from its earliest concept and remained closely involved with Rapunzel’s design, acting, and movement after stepping away from directing.

Keane originally pursued a feature adaptation of Rapunzel in the 1990s and pitched the project at Disney in 2001. Although Tangled ultimately became a computer-animated film directed by Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, Keane’s hand-drawn animation experience strongly influenced its character work. He served as an executive producer and as Rapunzel’s supervising animator, helping animators refine expressions, poses, and emotional performances.

His earlier credits included supervising animation on characters such as Ariel in The Little Mermaid, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas. That background made him especially suited to shaping Rapunzel, whose appeal depends on expressive acting as much as on her extraordinarily long hair.

A common mix-up is identifying Keane as the film’s final director. He began as director during development, but Greno and Howard took over the directing duties after Keane suffered a heart attack in 2008. His animation leadership nevertheless remained central to the finished film.