Anna Frozen: Who She Is, Who Voices Her and Her Story

Anna is the younger princess of Arendelle and the sister of Elsa, the heroine who drives the story of Frozen (2013), directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee. Kristen Bell voices her in every film and short, while Livvy Stubenrauch voices Young Anna in the first film. The credits list her as Anna (Voice), Anna (voice) and Anna (voice) (archive sound), with Young Anna, Young Anna (archive sound) and Young Anna (Ahtohallan Voice) for her childhood self, so you may see slightly different names depending on where you look.

What are the defining character traits of Anna in Frozen (2013)? The films show them through her choices rather than a label. In the first film she gets engaged to Prince Hans of the Southern Isles on the day the castle gates reopen, then goes after Elsa up the North Mountain, and later steps between Hans and Elsa's sword. In Frozen II she wakes the earth giants to bring down the dam. Each of those choices follows from the same setup: a girl kept apart from her sister for years.

The setup explains where this comes from. As a child, Anna is hit by a blast of ice from Elsa while the two play. Trolls heal her and erase her memory of the magic, and the king and queen close the castle gates and keep the sisters apart. Anna grows up behind those gates, and the parents who might have explained are lost at sea. If you are choosing a film for a family evening, both features carry a PG rating in the US. The wider cast sits on the Frozen characters page, and the full credits are on Frozen cast.

Anna's closest relationship is with her older sister Elsa, and every other bond in the series is measured against it. The first film is about getting those two back together, and the shorts then show them as a settled pair. The ice powers that drive the story are covered on Elsa powers, and Elsa has her own profile at Elsa Frozen.

Kristoff is the ice deliverer who goes after Elsa with her, and Sven is his reindeer. When Anna begins to freeze, Kristoff rushes her back to Hans for a kiss, and at the end of the first film he becomes the royal ice deliverer and shares a kiss with her. In Frozen II, Kristoff proposes to Anna after the flood is stopped. Olaf is the living snowman who joins the search for Elsa, and Once Upon a Snowman (2020) shows the stretch of time before he meets her.

Hans is the relationship that goes wrong. Prince Hans of the Southern Isles is voiced by Santino Fontana, and Anna quickly gets engaged to him on the day of Elsa's coronation. He abandons her when she needs help and is later sent home in disgrace for treason. In Frozen Fever, Elsa's last sneeze sends a giant snowball toward Hans, a comic callback to the first film.

Her parents shape her story from the edges. King Agnarr is voiced by Alfred Molina in Frozen II, and Queen Iduna is voiced by Evan Rachel Wood. Anna and Elsa learn that Iduna came from the Northuldra and once saved Agnarr, which means Anna's roots reach beyond Arendelle. Trolls heal Anna as a child, and in Frozen II the troll leader Pabbie, voiced by Ciarán Hinds, tells the sisters they must find out what happened in the past.

In my opinion, Anna's best moment is still the one in the first film where, after Kristoff has rushed her back to Hans for a kiss, she steps between Hans and Elsa's sword instead. She throws herself in front of the blade rather than taking the kiss that was supposed to save her, and the film trusts that choice to land without a speech. It could be argued that the whole series rests on that one beat, because it turns a romance story into a story about sisters.

My second pick is quieter. In Olaf's Frozen Adventure, the sisters tell Olaf that their tradition is the cards and dolls Anna has been slipping under Elsa's door for years. It tells you more about how Anna copes with loneliness than most of the first film does, and it reframes the closed gates as years of patient effort on her side.

Third comes Frozen II, where Anna wakes the earth giants and brings the dam down. Perhaps it is the most grown up decision anyone makes in the series, since destroying the dam sends a flood toward Arendelle, and she does it to undo a wrong her grandfather did. The first film asked whether Anna could save her sister, and this one asked what she would risk for a bigger group of people. That being said, Frozen Fever deserves a mention for the clock tower scene, a small but warm reminder that she is as quick to catch Elsa as to follow her.