20 Disney Characters You Might Not Know Are Voiced By LGBTQ+ Actors
1.Tinker Bell
Mae Whitman gave a voice to everyone’s favorite Disney fairy in six full-length films and a short special. Whitman recently came out as pansexual on Twitter, seven years after the final film, Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast, was released. “This is the word that fits me best,” she said of her sexuality label. “I’m proud+happy to be part of the Bi+ community.” Her coming out tweet was sparked due to her most recent voice acting position playing a lesbian character named Amity on Disney Channel’s The Owl House.
2.Cogsworth
Disney fans were introduced to Cogsworth in 1991 when Beauty and the Beast hit the big screen for the first time. The story was told again through a combination of live-action and computer animation in 2017, with Cogsworth once again making an appearance. The actors playing the clever clock in each film are both gay! David Ogden Stiers, from the first movie and its sequels, came out in 2009, saying that he was gay and “very proud to be so.” Stiers also has had roles in Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and several other Disney productions. Ian McKellan, from the remake, came out as gay over thirty years ago, saying of the experience, “Life at last begins to make sense, when you are open and honest.”
3.Isabella
Alyson Stoner is a veteran of the Disney Channel, appearing in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, Camp Rock, and several other productions. Her longest role was voicing Isabella, the hard-working Fireside Girl who is in love with Phineas on Phineas and Ferb. In 2018, Stoner wrote a moving essay on Teen Vogue about coming to terms with her sexuality. “I can love people of every gender identity and expression. It is the soul that captivates me.” Stoner’s Instagram profile says that she uses she/they pronouns.
4.Terri Perry
Sean Hayes is most popular for playing Jack on Will and Grace, but he joined the Disney team for Monsters University to voice Terri, one of Mike and Sulley’s fraternity brothers. While Hayes didn’t publicly come out of the closet for years, he claims that he "was never in." He initially refused to confirm or deny the assumptions about his sexuality, claiming that if people knew that he was gay, it would cause them to view his characters differently. He put rumors to rest in an interview with The Advocate in 2010, referring to himself as a “gay guy.”
5.Chief of Tail
Raya and the Last Dragon has sparked conversation in the gay community due to Raya’s ambiguous sexuality and the actress' queer coding. However, this isn’t the only reason the film has been a topic in LGBTQ+ spaces. Patti Harrison, who voices the chief of Tail, is a trans woman, the first trans person to voice a Disney animated character. While she only has a few lines, this is a small step in the right direction for Disney, especially considering that trans actors tend to only get trans roles. Hopefully Disney will continue on this path and hire even more trans actors in the future!
6.Kristoff
Jonathan Groff played Anna’s romantic interest in both Frozen films, following the princess on quests to save her sister. While Kristoff pines for Anna, Groff himself only has eyes for men, which he confirmed in 2009, to a reporter who asked if he was gay. These days, he has a boyfriend named Corey Baker, a choreographer that he has been dating since 2018, when they met while teaching at a summer theater program.
7.Dory
Ellen Degeneres is one of the most famous LGBTQ+ people in entertainment and has been since she came out in 1997. She made history when the titular character of her sitcom Ellen came out around the same time as the real Ellen, making her the first person to say, “I’m gay,” on a sitcom. Six years later, Degeneres brought the friendly blue tang to life with the Pixar film Finding Nemo, and in 2016, she was able to star in the sequel, Finding Dory.
8.Timon
The snippy meerkat Timon made his movie debut in 1994, when Nathan Lane voiced him in The Lion King. Several people have voiced Timon since in various Disney projects, including Billy Eichner in the 2019 computer-animated remake. Coincidentally, both he and Lane happen to be gay! Lane and his partner Devlin Elliot have been together for nearly 25 years and have written two children’s books about their dog Mabel. Eichner is currently single, but he is set to star in a Universal gay rom-com to be released next summer.
9.Penny
The 2008 movie Bolt is about a pup who is a movie star alongside his owner Penny, who is voiced by Miley Cyrus. Cyrus has always been a big advocate for the gay community, and she first began to have same sex feelings at age fourteen. Since then, she has explored relationships with both men and women, but she has never cared for the term “bisexual.” She prefers to call herself pansexual, and says that “girls are way hotter” than boys. Cyrus has also spent a lot of time exploring her gender and identifies as gender-fluid.
10.Moonwind
The movie Soul broke barriers for Pixar by featuring the first Black main character, Joe Gardner. The voice cast offers additional diversity, as it features a gay man, Graham Norton, who plays Moonwind, a spiritual sign spinner. Norton didn’t know any gay people when he was growing up, which made it difficult for him to accept his sexuality. Instead, he found himself wishing that his same sex feelings would disappear. Now though, he has hope for LGBTQ+ young people that it will be easier for them in today’s world.
11.Queen Miranda
Sara Ramirez plays Sofia’s mother Queen Miranda in Sofia the First, but Sara identifies as neither king nor queen; rather, they are somewhere in the middle. Ramirez came out as bisexual in 2016, and non-binary in 2020, saying, “In me is the capacity to be Girlish boy, Boyish girl, Boyish boy, Girlish girl, All, Neither.” They use she/they pronouns and identify as queer as well.
12.Alberto
Actor Jack Dylan Grazer came out as bisexual several weeks after Pixar’s latest film Luca premiered, in which Grazer plays Luca’s best friend Alberto. The close friendship between the two characters reminded many fans of a young queer love story, but the director Enrico Casarosa insisted that their relationship is platonic. Grazer, however, has said that it would be cool if the characters fell in love in a sequel. He also recently made it known that he uses he/they pronouns.
13.Monique
Raven-Symoné rose to Disney fame with her '00s show, That’s So Raven, but that was not the only series she was on. Raven had a role on Kim Possible, voicing a character named Monique, Kim’s best friend. Raven was aware of her sexuality from when she was a young girl, but while growing up in the limelight, she was hiding her true self, feeling pressure to stick to her celebrity brand. After coming out in 2013, she has said that she doesn’t want to be called gay. “I want to be labelled a human who loves humans.” Raven also voiced Iridessa from the Disney Fairies franchise.
14.Slim
A Bug’s Life was ahead its time, touching on a queer related issue with a male character, Francis, dealing with people assuming that he is a girl just because he is a ladybug. The voice behind Francis’ coworker Slim brings another LGBTQ+ touch to the film, as he is gay. David Hyde Pierce has been with his husband Brian Hargrove since 1983, but he didn’t come out as gay to the public until 2007. Prior to this, he avoided questions about his sexuality, but these days, he doesn’t mind discussing the topic. When asked about his experience coming out of the closet, he said, “It hasn’t stopped.”
15.Moana
While many Disney Princesses of the past spent much of their time only longing for men, modern princesses have been working to change the trope. One of those princesses is Moana, who not only doesn’t spend her movie wishing for a man, but, she is the first Disney Princess to be voiced by a non-straight woman. Auliʻi Cravalho came out in a TikTok as bisexual four years after the movie was released. She wasn’t expecting the amount of acceptance and support that she received, but she is grateful to all of her fans. She has even received offers for LGBTQ+ roles since revealing her sexuality.
16.Funny
Disney Junior’s newest cartoon, Mickey Mouse Funhouse, brings about new adventures for Mickey Mouse and his gang with a talking funhouse called Funny. The voice behind Funny is Harvey Guillén, who falls into the LGBTQ+ community, referring to himself as, “queer, plus-size, and brown.” Guillen has always considered himself to be "out of the closet," sharing his identity while growing up and then choosing not to hide his sexuality when he found fame. “I never wanted to start a career pretending.”
17.Sergeant Calhoun
In Wreck-It-Ralph, Sergeant Calhoun struggles to overcome her past after a relationship ends badly. Calhoun’s voice actress Jane Lynch has also dealt with some difficulties in her past when she struggled to accept her sexuality. She once wrote in a journal as a young teenager, “I am gay. No one can ever know this.” Today, she is out and proud, and she has a message for those who have difficulty accepting themselves: “You are going to find something in you that is going to help you move on and make you a more extraordinary person.”
18.Bunga
Timon and Pumba have an adopted honey badger nephew named Bunga in the series The Lion Guard. Joshua Rush, who voices Bunga, came out as bisexual via his Twitter, following the big reveal from another Disney character he played, Cyrus, on Andi Mack. As Cyrus, Rush made history as the first person to say the words “I’m gay” on the Disney Channel. LGBT+ fans were inspired by Cyrus, and Rush was in turn inspired by the fans, feeling brave enough to announce his true sexuality. He made it clear, however, that this is only part of who he is. “Being bi isn’t all of my identity, nor is it the most important part of my identity.”
19.Terk
Rosie O’Donnell joined the Disney family in 1999 when she provided the voice of Tarzan’s best gorilla friend Terk in Tarzan. While Tarzan was adopted by his ape family, O’Donnell relates to unconventional adoption in her personal life, as she has fostered and adopted several children as a lesbian, something that some places still do not allow. She is a strong proponent for gay adoption rights, especially after a foster child was removed from her home simply due to O’Donnell’s relationship with her female partner at the time.
20.Benny
Romeo and Juliet is a classic heterosexual love story, but the voice behind Gnomeo’s best friend Benny in Disney’s version of the tale, Gnomeo and Juliet, brought a bit of a gay touch to the cast. Matt Lucas has known he was gay since he was seven years old, after saying to a friend, "Don't you think sometimes men are handsome?" He was briefly married in the mid 2000s but divorced soon thereafter. These days, he is currently in the midst of working on a secret project to be announced soon.
