8 Fictional Movie Villains Inspired By Real People

4. Ursula (The Little Mermaid) - Divine

Disney Ursula Divine
Disney/ Automat Pictures

Animated movies can more easily get away with using real-world people as templates for their characters, due to the fact they can be exaggerated to a degree that most live-action films can't get away with.

The Little Mermaid's Ursula is an example of this, with Disney's monstrous sea-witch drawing heavily from the look of American actor and drag queen Divine, who film buffs will know from his appearances in John Waters films like Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble.

Ursula and Divine share many physical similarities, including the same signature eye-makeup and the same body type, with both being on the slightly bulkier side. Ursula is also rather eccentric, just like Divine, and the two share a penchant for noticeable, dangly earrings.

Sadly, Divine died in 1988 so was never able to see The Little Mermaid for himself (it released in 1989), but those who knew the man were confident that he would've been thrilled with the movie as a whole, as well as Ursula's character.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!