Jafar

Jafar is a fictional character and the main antagonist in Walt Disney Pictures' 31st animated feature film Aladdin (1992). He is voiced by Jonathan Freeman, who also portrayed the character in the Broadway musical adaptation. Jafar also appears in the 1994 sequel to Aladdin, but he is not in the 1996 third film or the TV series. An inspiration to the character is the villain Jaffar, played by Conrad Veidt in The Thief of Bagdad, from which Aladdin borrows several character ideas and plot elements. The Jafar of Disney's Aladdin plays essentially the same part as the character from the 1940 film, and is drawn with notable similarity to Veidt's looks. He is loosely based on the real-life Abbasid vizier Ja'far ibn Yahya. Development Animator Andreas Deja decided to design Jafar in a way he was contrasting to the other characters, with many vertical lines against the curvy designs based on Al Hirschfeld. Jonathan Freeman, who composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman met when he auditioned for Little Shop of Horrors and had previously invited Freeman to audition for both The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, said that the artwork was what got him truly interested in the role. He stated that "once I saw those heavy lidded eyes, that long narrow face, I knew that Jafar was going to be something really special." He was the first actor cast, and spent one year and nine months recording dialogue; he went months without any other actors to interact, and later interrupted theater tours to fly to Los Angeles and record newly written lines. When Deja first met Freeman, he was surprised to see the lack of physical similarity to the character, but included some of Freeman's acting and gesturing into Jafar's animation.