Gaston (Beauty and the Beast)

Gaston is a fictional character in Walt Disney Pictures' animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991). Voiced by American actor and singer Richard White, Gaston is an arrogant and ruthless hunter whose unrequited feelings for the intellectual Belle drive him to murder his adversary, the Beast, once he realizes she cares for him instead. Gaston serves as a foil personality to the Beast, who was once as vain as Gaston prior to his transformation.

Gaston is a character original to Disney, as he is not present in the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont upon which the 1991 film is based. Imagined by screenwriter Linda Woolverton, who based the character on the ex-boyfriends she dated in her past, Gaston was developed specifically for Disney's adaptation of Beauty and the Beast because the studio felt that the film could benefit from a strong villain, who is lacking in the original fairy tale. As the character evolves from a non-threatening aristocrat into an arrogant man relentlessly seeking Belle's hand in marriage, Gaston ultimately replaced a female relative of Belle's who the filmmakers had originally created to serve as the film's villain.

In direct contrast to his adversary the Beast, Gaston is depicted as physically handsome with an unattractive personality, both physically and emotionally embodying hypermasculinity. Both Disney and supervising animator Andreas Deja initially struggled with the concept of animating a handsome villain, which had never been attempted by the studio before. Deja ultimately based Gaston's appearance on those of handsome soap opera actors in order to create a grotesque version of the Prince Charming stock character, while some of White's own operatic mannerisms were incorporated into the character.

Gaston has been generally positively received by film critics, as his lack of "magic power or political influence" means that his villainy tends to resonate with audiences who often identify someone similar to him in real life, although critics regard him as a less memorable villain than some of the studio's previous efforts. Considered to be one of Disney's most famous villains, Gaston is frequently ranked within the top-tens of Disney villain rankings released by several media publications.