Interview: Paige O’Hara, Belle in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”

Posted on September 26, 2016 at 1:12 pm

Broadway star Paige O’Hara provided the sweet singing and speaking voice for Belle in Disney’s classic “Beauty and the Beast,” celebrating its 25th anniversary with a gorgeous new DVD/Blu-ray edition. She is also an accomplished painter. I was delighted to get a chance to talk to her about her earliest and favorite singing roles and what it was like to appear in Disney’s most romantic musical fairy tale. She told me the exact moment when Belle falls in love – and she shared for the first time a lovely story about her favorite singer, Mary Martin.

What was the first song you ever learned to sing?

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” because my nanny used to sing that.

And did you always love performing?

My family always knew I was an actor, I’ve always been an actress. They called me “Little Sarah Bernhardt” but I didn’t know I could really sing till I turned around 12 years old and did I did the “Peter Pan” song “I’ve Gotta Crow” for a competition. And they said “Oh my gosh! That voice is huge, you’ve got to sing.” And I started singing really around 12 years old.

Were there performers in your family?

No, not really. The only singer or musical person in my family was my aunt who sing with Dinah Shore. But she fell in love and got married and left the business. But my mom was my drama eacher. She did the acting and directing for the performing arts high school. So my mom was really my teacher, she was amazing.

She’s really brilliant but she wasn’t “method” in the fact that she didn’t over-intellectualize everything. She would actually try to be organic with the direction of the characters. So the realism of my characters I think came from her teaching me about that. Do you remember the character Auntie Mame? She was like that, with the looks of Carole Lombard!

What was the first musical play you saw?

I think the first musical play I saw I was in. It was “The Wizard of Oz.” I was like a little this background munchkin person but then the next year I got to play Cinderella so that was fun.

You came to New York after high school to be on Broadway?

Of course! I actually turned down a full scholarship at the Cincinnati Conservatory to go right to New York, but I was ready. I had been in this school with my mom and I’d been acting my whole life. It’s not really the norm for most people and I don’t really recommend it unless you’re in this circumstance that I was in. I was just ready to do it and I was lucky. I had to do those watercolors and sell them on the street to pay my rent. But within one year I had my equity card and created Della in “Gift of the Magi” on Broadway. So it was really cool.

What was your audition song for “Beauty and the Beast?”

I sang “Heaven Help My Heart” from Chess. That’s a great, great song because it shows range.

It’s a very challenging song.

I played the lead in “Chess” so I knew it really well and from the reaction from the casting director, I could tell I was getting a callback. So we went through five auditions and every audition had more people, two people, four people, all of them including Jeffrey Katzenberg. So it was crazy and it was over a span of two weeks and my husband had proposed to me, a day before I got the job. The next day I walked into the apartment and there was a message from David Friedman who was the musical director for Beauty and the Beast saying “Paige it’s David, we’ve got to get together and set keys” and I was like, “My God, my God!”

That’s how I found out. And literally like two seconds later my agent called and I said, “I know!!” It was just crazy, a pretty exciting week!

Tell me about creating the character of Belle.

I always say there’s a lot of us in Belle. We all share the role, Linda Woolverton who wrote it, James Foster and Mark Swain who animated it and then me. So it’s kind of funny that a lot of people said that the Linda Woolverton and I could be sisters. She is very much like me and like Belle she loves books and reading and I pushed that. Belle has a sense of humor and she is the oldest Disney Princess. She’s in her early 20s. They had never done it before; the other princesses are teenagers. She is an old soul, too, and her heart has got to be evident throughout the entire film; you’ve got to feel her heart. And I appreciate it more now, 25 years later, what she did being willing to give up her life for her father. I just love the fact that Belle was her own person. She wasn’t looking for a man and she had the guts to stand up to Gaston.

You were lucky enough to work with your fellow actors in recording, which is not always the case in animated films.

It was fun working with Richard Wild because he was a friend and I had known him for years, so I felt I could take it pretty far. We had the written words and everything but they said, “If you want to expand a little bit on the dialogue, you can.”

Robby Benson and I were together, too. My whole character came to fruition when Robbie was hired because I was hired a month before they found him. It was instant chemistry. I’m such a fan because I was one of the many to have crushes on him. We were the same age when he was doing his films as a teenager and he would love hearing that but he would also love the fact that I loved him in “One on One” because I’m a diehard NBA fan. I think it’s kind of disappointing he didn’t have his own song in the movie but what an actor, oh my gosh!

Belle’s feelings change a lot over the course of the story.

Yes, absolutely, from being terrified to falling in love with him. And I know the moment she falls in love with him. When the little birds jump up on this paw and she smiles and she touches him and runs behind the tree. We talked about that with the directors. That’s the moment when she realizes she’s never felt this before, and her heart is going and she knows that… She knows she’s falling in love with him at that point.

Did you meet Angela Lansbury?

Yes! I was a huge fan of Angela’s and when I came to New York she was starring in “Gypsy” on Broadway. I paid to see it once. I was so broke but then I sneaked in at intermission and came back again and again and again to hear her sing “Rose’s Turn.” Every night the audience would stand and stop the show. So it was really cool to talk to her. I pointed out that she played Mama Rose as if she was the child and Louise was the adult. She looked at me and she said, “You were the first person that ever said that and that’s exactly my intention”. And I was like, cool. I got it, I understand her theory in that role because she’s the most lovable of all the women that played that role. Because that role can be very abrasive but she was something else when she did that.

When she recorded “Beauty And The Beast” she spent all night traveling. She had gotten stuck in another city and was on the planes all night long before the session. They said they could cancel it and she could do it another day and she said, “Oh no, I’ll be there.” She gets in and she’s very nervous. She said, “I don’t know, that song has so much line, I don’t know if I can do that anymore,” they said, “Of course you can,” and lo and behold we have the whole orchestra, everybody’s there, and she’s behind the headset, and did it in one take. One take, one take and people were crying, people were crying. It was just unbelievable! It’s crazy!

And you’ve continued to play Belle into some other versions.

The thing I like about Belle, she never ages and I do. I played her again in “Enchanted Christmas” and “Belle’s Magical World.”

You have appeared on stage in so many classic musicals. Do you have a favorite?

One of my favorites of course is “The Sound of Music.” Mary Martin’s granddaughter, Heidi Hagman, Larry Hagman’s daughter, played Liesel in our show. She told Mary that I was a huge fan of hers. She said, “This Paige girl is like crazy for you, Grandma.” I got this big box sent to the theater she had pulled out her Ordinary Couple dress that was in the museum and the note said, “I want you to wear this. Love, Mary. I hear you are a lot like me.” I still have the note. I wore the dress and it fit perfectly and then I sent it back. That was like the most amazing thing. And she set it up for me to talk over phone with the real Maria.

What do you hope families will talk about after they see the movie?

It’s timeless. It’s one film where every single factor came together. I get so much fan mail from of little girls because they don’t feel like a geek anymore because Belle loves to read. The message is just timeless, it’s relevant now. Beauty comes from within.

Related Tags:

Interview: Natasha Henstridge on “Ice Girls”

Posted on September 24, 2016 at 10:37 pm

Natasha Henstridge gets to play the bad guy in Ice Girls, available on DVD October 4, 2016. Real-life skating stars Micheala du Toit, Elvis Stojko, Taylor Hunsley, and Tessa Virtue appear in the film, the story of a young figure skater trying to come back after an injury, and her competitor, pushed by a demanding mother, played by Henstridge. In an interview, Henstridge talked about working as a model when she was a teenager and the classic Disney villain that inspired her performance.

You are a Canadian so you must have grown up knowing how to ice skate.

I kind of did, actually. I got to do none of it in this movie, unfortunately, but I do know how to ice skate pretty well.

Did you give the girls in the movie any tips?

When you’re working with the likes of Michaela Du Toit who is a big champion in South Africa, and Taylor Hunsley, honestly not so much. Not so much. They are such incredible skaters. It was so much fun to watch them work and it was beautiful, it was really beautiful. I’ve always loved watching figure skating anyway. My mom and I used to make a habit of doing that when I was a kid growing up. That was our girls’ time. And to see it up close like that it’s just incredible how much work these girls put in their craft.

How did writer/director Damien Lee prepare you for the role of the demanding mother?

Damien was so funny because he kept describing the character as Cruella de Vil. That’s just how horrible this woman is, but like every character you have to have a arc and of course she learns a few things. My character is just very, very caught up in her child being a reflection of who she is. Like these women that from “Toddlers and Tiaras” and “Dance Moms,” when they put an immense amount of pressure on their child and they think it’s for the child but somewhere inside it’s obviously nurturing some issues that they have within themselves. And so I got to play that and I mean there were moments honestly that I did that I just creeped out myself.

We’ve all seen it. We’ve all seen people behave badly and we’ve all seen people who didn’t recognize even see or understand how they are coming across. It’s not like it’s easy to do but I’ve seen the competitive world where parents get overly involved. I had children in sports. I have been to plenty of games with my son and seen some of the parents there that are just busting the kids’ butt, trying to get them to live up to the parent’s expectation. So it’s not so far-fetched. But what was interesting is there were times actually when I actually said, “This scene is a little far-fetched, I mean of course we heighten things for films,” and Taylor’s mom said, “Absolutely not, it’s much, much worse than how you are playing this.”

So you began working professionally very, very young. Does that help you relate to the girls in the film?

Yes, because in the industry that I went into when I was young, it was a highly competitive world as well and there were expectations on things like your weight and a lot of pressure in terms of how you look. Taylor I know left her family so that she could be near her trainer in a difference place kind of early on, she left home quite early, so we definitely related to following your dreams, and following your path of being younger than most people when they leave home but being hungry and wanting to take chances. So we certainly understood each other on that level for sure.

When you were moving from modeling to acting, what was the best advice that you got?

When I was modeling a lot of people used to say, “Gosh, you have so much personality, you need to be in front of the camera, you need to be doing films and stuff.” I had done a lot of TV commercials and for me the idea was always to act, that’s what I wanted to do from an from an early age. At that time people didn’t do a lot of crossovers so you’re either a model or an actress. If you wanted to be an actress and if you wanted to focus on that you sort of had to cut off the modeling thing. I don’t know if that was the best advice but at the time I think that was the best advice.

I see that you’ve got social media accounts, you’ve twitter and Instagram. How do you enjoy that?

I think I probably missed the boat on being super excited about that and had I done it earlier I probably would’ve been a lot more successful at it but I was definitely late to the party on some level. I think it’s a fun way to burn a few moments of your day and check-in and stay somewhat connected. I can’t say it comes particularly naturally nor do I have that sensibility that some people have were there making these beautiful pages, they are like art directors.

My favorite picture on your Instagram was the one with of parents where you said “no filters.”

No filters, figuratively or literally.

So what did you learn from your parents that you tried to incorporate into your own parenting?

I take a lot of things from them now that I’m a parent myself. I used to judge them so, so harshly because I was a kid. You never know what they’re talking about until you go through the fire yourself. You just never know, and suddenly you get older and they have suddenly have become much wiser than you ever thought they were and that’s the biggest thing I would say. That’s the biggie.

Related Tags:

Actors

Natalie Portman Plays Jacqueline Kennedy in “Jackie”

Posted on September 22, 2016 at 3:29 pm

Oscar-winner Natalie Portman plays Jacqueline Kennedy in “Jackie,” which was featured at the Toronto Film Festival and has been picked up for theatrical release. Director Pablo Larraín retells this story of the young First Lady, only 34 when she entered the White House. Her grace and poise and elegance made her an instant icon. Structuring his film around Theodore H. White’s LIFE magazine interview with the First Lady, just a week after the assassination of her husband, it covers her return to the White House, arrangements for the President’s funeral, and accompanying her husband’s coffin to Arlington Cemetery. The Chilean filmmaker told Vanity Fair he would not have considered making the film without Portman.

“All the films I made before, like Neruda, are movies about male characters,” explains the filmmaker. “So I had to connect with things I never connected before and I did it in a very personal way. . .I talked to my mother , and, from the international worldwide aspect, Kennedy was like the one and only queen that lived in this country. . .a queen without a throne.”

Dory and Woody — Ellen DeGeneres and Tom Hanks Talk Pixar Voice Work

Posted on September 12, 2016 at 8:00 am

I really enjoyed this conversation between two of Pixar’s best and most distinctive voice talents, Ellen DeGeneres (Dory) and Tom Hanks (Woody). It’s fun and has some real insight into what goes into those performances.

Related Tags:

Actors Behind the Scenes

Interview: Natalie Portman on “A Tale of Love and Darkness”

Posted on August 31, 2016 at 3:44 pm

Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman wrote, directed, and stars in “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” based on the international best-selling memoir by Amos Oz. It was a pleasure to speak to her about the challenges of adapting the book and directing a child actor.

What do we learn from the troubled but tender relationship between Amos and his mother?

The film and the book are very much about what happens when expectations don’t line up with reality. And I think that a lot of the things that they might tell young people about what happens once you have a job or once you go to college or once you get married, these things are like the way to happiness or something, once you’ve got to those realities and you achieved those whether you call them goals or expectations and then they are different than you expected them to be, and then dealing with those differences can be one of the most challenging things in life.

In the film, the child’s father is fascinated at the derivation of and connection between words, possibly because it takes place at a time when modern conversational Hebrew was being invented.

It’s a really fascinating time in history because not only was this country of Israel being created by a group of refugees, which I’m not sure has happened before, but also they were revising the language as you said, a language that has been spoken purely in a religious context, in a Biblical or liturgical context for hundreds of years and then all of a sudden it needed to be used for everyday usage and needed to be updated rapidly. And so it’s really fascinating seeing how they came up with new words, what they drew from. Ohad talked about his uncle in the book who was one of the architects of modern Hebrew, creating new words, from biblical words and he created the word for “shirt” and he says in the book, “If my uncle hadn’t invented the word for shirt we would still be saying, ‘I put on my coat of many colors this morning.'” And it’s really amazing how they introduced these new words and got them really accepted into everyday usage. And what an exciting time to be a writer, too, because you could literally invent your language as you were inventing your story.

You began acting when you were very young and now in this movie are working with a very young actor. What did you learn from your experiences as a child performer that helped you direct this actor?

I think the most important thing was that when I was a kid I felt that everyone on set made sure that the environment felt like playing more than working and I wanted to repeat that for Amir because the film is quite serious in tone. The atmosphere should always be positive for him so I really tried to make sure that everyone was very calm on set and between takes we would goof around and make jokes and not have it be a stressful environment for him.

You have worked with so many outstanding directors, very different directors in terms of their approach and their style. What were some of the things that you tried to take from your experiences and use as a director?

I have been lucky to work with so many people who I admire so much and I took a lot from many different directors I worked with. From Darren Aronofsky, I saw how he worked with each actor really individually. He would do different things with different actors to elicit their performances from them which I thought was really smart because everyone needs something different. And from Terrence Malick, I saw that you don’t have to play by the rules at all. You just need to make movies the way that you make them and the way you want to tell them. And then Mike Nichols just always always says, “Keep reminding yourself what story you are telling, where you are in the story and claim the big moment.”

What do we learn from the scene at the end that gives us a glimpse of the main character as an adult?

The book actually deals with many different time periods including the present. I felt that it was important for me to show where he ends up because he did and end up fulfilling his mother’s dreams in a way by becoming this pioneer by becoming a writer. After all of her storytelling, somehow his mother’s absence turned him into the man he became. He was so influenced by her but also he gave himself his own name. Ohad means strong in Hebrew and it.s part of remaking himself.

How did you use your character’s clothing to tell her story?

I actually was lucky enough to have the great designer Alber Elbaz who formerly designed at Lanvin for the past ten years and is originally Israeli also. He did all of my costumes for the film. We really wanted to tell a story through the wardrobe. I like this European elegance that they had but also poverty. They don’t have a lot and she’s wearing the same clothes over and over again. But they’re beautiful clothes that she had from Europe. She had three outfits. Also the clothes helped tell the passage of time. We go from a more 40’s silhouette to a more 50’s silhouette which helps us understand the time that has gone by.

What were you looking for in the movie’s score?

The music was an amazing part of the film to do and to learn. It’s actually really surprising to me how hard it was because I really love music and I’ve always known very specifically the kind of music that I want. But the problem with this film, the music that I felt fit emotionally, when you put it next to the actual emotion on the film, it kind of doubled the emotion and was too much. And so I realized that you have to actually had to go against, and again, it can’t be the exact same emotion you’re going for. I worked with a really close friend, the composer Nick Britell who was amazing. He would just sit with me and try hundred different things because I really needed to hear it to make sure it was right. He wrote so many beautiful pieces for the film. I’m so proud of the work that he did and he added immeasurably to the film.

What do you want this film to tell people about Israel?

I don’t intend to be educational on this film. It’s really very much about a family. But I think if there’s anything that movies can do it is that they can remind us that people and places that we might not know about or that we might have preconceived notions about or even prejudices against, they can make us relate to someone as a human and hopefully you just see them in a different way. A movie can help you relate to the emotion and it might of someone that you might never meet your whole life.