--- name: "Donna Murphy" canonical: "https://film.one/person/donna-murphy" roles: ["Actor"] born: "7 March 1959" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T06:38:51.266315+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Donna Murphy Actor. Born 7 March 1959 in Corona, New York, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 7 March 1959, Corona, New York, USA - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q439457, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0614220/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2517 ## Streaming the US now - **Disney+:** [*Tangled*](https://film.one/film/tangled.md) (75) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Donna Murphy > Donna Murphy is a stage actor whom the cinema has mostly used in passing, and once used properly: Mother Gothel in *Tangled*, a villain who needs no magic beyond a mother's voice. That one performance shows what the screen has otherwise wasted. The kiss on the forehead comes first, then the joke about your weight, and Donna Murphy delivers both in a single breath as if they were the same act of love. That is Mother Gothel in *Tangled* (2010), and it is the reason the film's villain is remembered when most of its songs are not. Disney villains are usually frightening because of what they can do. Gothel is frightening because of what she says, and how kindly she says it. "Mother Knows Best" is written as a lullaby and Murphy sings it as a list of everything wrong with you, without once raising her voice. We found her unsettling in a way the studio's villains rarely manage, because there is no spell involved; she is simply a parent who will not let go, and the voice never lets on that it knows. It is not surprising that a voice alone could do this, because the voice is where Murphy's career has lived. She began on Broadway in 1979 and made her name there in musicals: Fosca in Sondheim's *Passion* (1994), Anna in *The King and I* (1996), and a run of leads and revivals that carried on into the 2010s. Her stage reputation is for intense, transformative character work, the kind that asks an audience to sit with somebody difficult for a whole evening and come out fond of them. We cannot review what has never reached a screen, and we have not seen those. But Gothel is plainly a stage performance in an animated body: every line lands as if aimed at the back of the house, and every kindness has a hook in it. The cinema, meanwhile, has used her as furniture. Rosalie Octavius in *Spider-Man 2* (2004), Anij in *Star Trek: Insurrection* (1998), and a string of supporting parts between 1998 and 2012 that give a fine actor a scene or two and move on. We would not judge those at length, because none of them asked much of her. Alan Menken's song is the one time a film composer handed her something built for what she does, and she repaid it with the most quietly nasty three minutes in a family film we can remember. Her own explanation is the honest one: "It's cliché but there's a reason why actors do really love the opportunity to play a good villain." She was given one, and she did not waste it. Watch *Tangled* for the lanterns and stay for the mother, then wonder, as we did, why nobody has since given her a live-action part of the same size. ## Biography Donna Murphy is an American actress and singer, best known for her work in musical theatre. Born on 7 March 1959 in Corona, New York, she studied acting with Stella Adler and at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She made her Broadway debut in the late 1970s and went on to win two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical, for Fosca in *Passion* (1994) and Anna Leonowens in *The King and I* (1996). Murphy has appeared in films including *Star Trek: Insurrection* (1998) as Anij, *Spider-Man 2* (2004) as Rosalie Octavius, and *The Bourne Legacy* (2012) as Dita Mandy. She voiced Mother Gothel in the Disney animated film *Tangled* (2010). Her television credits include recurring roles in series such as *The Mentalist* and *The Blacklist*. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, behindthevoiceactors.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Tangled* (2010), Fi1m 75, as Mother Gothel (voice) — [page](https://film.one/film/tangled.md) ## Also known for - *Spider-Man 2* (2004), Rosalie Octavius - *The Bourne Legacy* (2012), Dita Mandy - *The Mentalist* (2008), Deandra Sunderland - *Law & Order: Special Victims Unit* (1999), Raye Massey - *The Blacklist* (2013), Sophia Quayle - *The Fountain* (2006), Betty - *World Trade Center* (2006), Judy Jonas - *CSI: Crime Scene Investigation* (2000), Annie Kramer --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/donna-murphy