Maleficent in the context of "Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)"

Aurora, also known as Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose, is a fictional character who appears in Disney Animation's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. Voiced by Mary Costa, Aurora is the only child of King Stefan and Queen Leah. An evil fairy named Maleficent seeks revenge for not being invited to Aurora's christening and curses the newborn princess, foretelling that she will prick her finger on a spinning wheel's spindle and die before sunset on her sixteenth birthday. Merryweather, one of the three good fairies, weakened the curse so Aurora would only sleep. Determined to prevent this, three good fairies raise Aurora as a peasant in order to protect her, patiently awaiting her sixteenth birthday—the day the spell can only be broken by a kiss from her true love, Prince Phillip.

Aurora is based on the princess in Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty". Some elements, such as her name, are derived from the ballet The Sleeping Beauty by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.For several years, Walt Disney had struggled to find a suitable actress to voice the princess and nearly abandoned the film entirely until Costa was discovered by composer Walter Schumann. However, Costa's southern accent nearly cost her the role until she proved that she could sustain a British accent for the duration of the film. In order to accommodate the film's unprecedentedly detailed backgrounds, Aurora's refined design demanded more effort than had ever been spent on an animated character before, with the animators drawing inspiration from Art Nouveau. Animated by Marc Davis, Aurora's slender physique was inspired by actress Audrey Hepburn. With 18 lines of dialogue and equally few minutes of screen time, the character speaks less than any speaking main character in a feature-length Disney animated film.