[18] Maleficent's likeness in the eponymous 2014 film, as portrayed by actress Angelina Jolie, was inspired by Lady Gaga's appearance in her "Born This Way" (2011) music video.

[13] In the animated film, where she is voiced by Eleanor Audley, Maleficent arrives at King Stefan and Queen Leah's castle during the christening of their newborn daughter, Princess Aurora.

Queen Leah asks her if she is offended, causing Maleficent to deny her rage, and subsequently offers to bestow a "gift" on Aurora to prove that she "bears no ill will".

Though Merryweather still has her gift to bestow, she cannot dispel Maleficent's power, but she can weaken the curse: if Aurora was to prick her finger, she will not die but only sleep until a kiss from her true love awakens her.

Later, at her castle in the Forbidden Mountains, a frustrated Maleficent asks her bestial army why they have been unable to find Aurora, who had been hidden and brought up by the three good fairies.

The three fairies cast an enhancing enchantment on Phillip's Sword of Truth, which he throws into Maleficent's heart, mortally wounding her before she falls off the crumbling cliff to her death.

The 2014 live-action reboot presents Maleficent as a good-hearted but tragic fairy who defends the Moors, a realm of supernatural beings, from neighboring humans.

Prior to sporting her iconic dark attire, Maleficent had a pair of giant wings and wore a brown leather dress, with sandals and an anklet.

Maleficent befriends a thieving peasant boy named Stefan, upon being alerted to his presence by a trio of pixies: Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Thistletwit (Juno Temple), and Flittle (Lesley Manville).

When she learns that now-King Stefan and his Queen Leila have a newborn daughter named Aurora (Elle Fanning), Maleficent acts in the name of what she considers poetic justice by cursing the newborn Aurora to fall into a deathlike slumber on her 16th birthday; the spell can be broken only by the kiss of true love, which neither Maleficent nor Stefan believe in.

Eventually, as Aurora grows into an industrious and sweet-tempered young woman, Maleficent recognizes the folly of punishing Stefan's daughter for something he alone did.

Roused from her enchanted sleep, and now fully aware of her father's true nature, Aurora foils his efforts to destroy Maleficent by returning the dark fairy's severed wings.

Completely stripped of her bitterness and thirst for vengeance, Maleficent declares an end to her feud with Stefan, but the king, driven by shame too great to bear, attempts to kill her and himself, only to take a fatal fall from his own castle's highest turret.

In the film, she longs to get the Fairy Godmother's magic wand, and combine it with her scepter in order to rule good and evil as she pleases, for which she entrusts her daughter with the task of stealing it.

When she accidentally breaches the barrier surrounding the island, she and Maleficent escape from her and obtain the wand, freezing the inhabitants of Auradon on the spot.

However, the power that Mal possesses of her thanks to the friendship of her friends, helps her defeat her mother, transforming her into a lizard, and immediately afterwards being locked in a glass cabinet.

In the sequel Descendants 2 (2017), Maleficent continues in her lizard form, and is taken back by Mal to the Isle of the Lost, where she accidentally falls and ends up on the streets of the place.

An alternate version of Maleficent appears in the ABC television series Once Upon a Time, played by Kristin Bauer van Straten.

[24][25] She debuts in a flashback of the first season episode "The Thing You Love Most", where Regina (the Evil Queen) goes in search of her help, being Maleficent shown as a woman with curly blonde hair and wearing a pink dress.

In dragon form, she mothered Lilith (Nicole Muñoz [teen]/Agnes Bruckner [adult]), and ends up making a deal with the protagonists to find her.

In the spin-off series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, Robin Hood and his Merry Men infiltrate Maleficent's castle in the episode "Forget Me Not", although she does not make an appearance, only hearing her dragon roar when she discovers that there are intruders.

Maleficent is resurrected in Kingdom Hearts II (2005), where with Pete's help she tries to find a new base of operations and assemble a new group of villains.

In Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (2012), Maleficent and Pete invade Disney Castle and take Minnie hostage, but they are stopped in the act thanks to Lea.

Maleficent is the protagonist in Serena Valentino's Disney Villains franchise book Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy.

[36] In The Simpsons short Plusaversary (2021), Maleficent (voiced by Tress MacNeille) runs the check-in table to enter at the party in Moe's Tavern, denying access to Homer due to not being listed as part of the guests.

"[44] When analyzing Maleficent's disability after she loses her wings due to Stephan's betrayal, Colleen Elaine Donnelly compares her role to that of Elphaba in Wicked, explaining that in both cases, the story "intends to reform the stereotype of the evil witch by providing a backstory.