Paige O'Hara

Belle sounds as though she has thought about what she is saying. In Beauty and the Beast (1991), Paige O'Hara makes her bookishness and independence audible without giving her the chilly voice of someone correcting the company. The singing has the same warmth as the speech, so we never feel that a different performer has arrived for the songs. We were moved by her tenderness, because O'Hara makes affection sound possible for someone who still knows her own mind.

Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale's film occasionally lets the comic bustle crowd the romance, which is our principal reservation about it. O'Hara helps keep the feeling clear, giving Howard Ashman's lyrics and Alan Menken's music the benefit of her stage experience. Her work alongside Robby Benson's Beast has the ease of actors responding to each other. We can hear the technique in her delivery, but she uses it to make Belle's feelings intelligible rather than to advertise the singer's abilities.

This was her film debut, following stage roles including Show Boat (1983), and Belle remained her defining screen part. Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (1997) began the film reprises; Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) returned her to Belle in a cameo. Her live-action appearance as Angela in Enchanted (2007) sits outside that run. The later credits largely extend her association with Belle, with little suggestion of a sustained move towards different screen characters.

There is less prominent non-Disney screen work on which to base a broader judgement, and we would not invent one. Nor would we mistake the repeated use of Belle for evidence that O'Hara could only do one thing. What we can hear in that first film is an actor making the speaking voice matter as much as the singing, even with so much musical activity around her. Start with Beauty and the Beast and listen as closely between the songs.