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16 Fascinating Things You Didn’t Know About Maleficent

Disney's baddest broad has an incredible past.

We first saw Maleficent onscreen in Disney's 1959 adaptation of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale.

1. Eleanor Audley, the actress who voiced the animated Maleficent also voiced Lady Tremaine (aka the Evil Stepmother) in Cinderella and Madame Leota in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion attraction.

2. The name "Maleficent" is a derivative of the Latin word maleficentia, meaning "evil-doing."

3. Audley acted out her scenes in costume, which inspired the final design for her character.

4. The flame-like detailing of Maleficent's robes were based off of a medieval Czech illustration legendary Disney illustrator Marc Davis came across in his household collection of art.

5. Maleficent's collar was designed to have a "bat-like" appearance.

6. And unsurprisingly, her horns were based right off the devil "so she would frighten everybody half to death."

But with a live-action version of Sleeping Beauty told from Maleficent's perspective set to be released, we haven't seen the last of the Mistress of All Evil...

7. Tim Burton was originally in the running to direct the live-action Maleficent.

8. Angelina Jolie had a HUGE role in developing Maleficent's on-screen look for the live-action movie. Her horns were made by artisans who specialize in fetishware.

9. Jolie wore several different versions of the horns throughout the movie because she could have broken her neck with the heaviest version of the horns.

10. One version of the horns was magnetic and could pop off Jolie's head.

11. Lady Gaga's look in her music video for "Born This Way" inspired the prosthetic cheekbones Jolie wore for the film.

12. And the contacts she wore while filming were based off of goat eyes, which have horizontal pupils.

13. Jolie developed her voice for the role while giving her children a bath.

14. Jolie's daughter Vivienne plays a younger version of Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) in the movie because she was not afraid of her mother's scary look in costume.

15. And two of her other children, Pax and Zahara, have cameos in the christening scene as young royalty.

16. Jolie reportedly hand-selected pop songstress Lana Del Rey to cover "Once Upon A Dream" for the new film.

Consider yourselves educated, you fools!

In the most evil of mistakes, an earlier version of this post had the release of "Sleeping Beauty" listed as 1957. The movie was released in 1959.