Photographer Annie Leibovitz continues her “Disney Dream Portrait Series” that has put stars in all kinds of Disney fantasies. This time, the lens is on the undersea world of Ariel, heroine of “The Little Mermaid.” To play the parts, she dressed actress Julianne Moore and American swimming icon Michael Phelps in tails and scales.

“Yes, Julianne has a big mermaid tail; it’s interesting,” Leibovitz recalled from the shoot. “Michael, too. His movements were so graceful and beautiful you just felt like you were watching a real merman.”

Inside The Shoot

Leibovitz worked her mastery on soundstages on both coasts, as Phelps was lowered into a backlot tank in Los Angeles used for underwater movie scenes. “One of the most complicated shots I have ever done,” said Leibovitz.

At a New York soundstage, Moore became the starry-eyed Ariel. “There’s a moment in the shoot where Julianne is sitting on a rock in her mermaid tail and her young daughter comes in, and there is not a dry eye in the house,” Leibovitz recalled. “She sat in her mother’s lap. Her jaw just dropped. She could not believe her mother was Ariel.”

When Moore was asked to play Ariel, she recalls, “I leapt at the chance.” “Ariel is my daughter’s favorite princess, so I was just really so excited to do it,” Moore said. “All the images I’ve seen that Annie’s shot so far – Cinderella and Alice and the prince one – are absolutely exquisite. They are so beautiful and so kind of wonderfully emotional. So I was really thrilled to be asked to work with her and do this.”

Star-Studded Series

The latest image – planned for the June issue of Vanity Fair magazine – continues the renowned Leibovitz series of putting celebrities inside their Disney fantasies. Released in separate flights since January 2007, these have included:

• Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella, Beyoncé as Alice in Wonderland and David Beckham as the gallant Prince Phillip from “Sleeping Beauty.”
• Rachel Weisz as Snow White, Roger Federer as King Arthur from “The Sword in the Stone,” Julie Andrews as the Blue Fairy from “Pinocchio” with Abigail Breslin as Fira from “Disney Fairies.”
• Jennifer Lopez as Jasmine, Marc Anthony as Aladdin and Whoopi Goldberg playing the Genie; Giselle Bündchen as Wendy Darling, Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan and Tina Fey as Tinker Bell; and Jessica Biel as Pocahontas.

Here is a peek behind the scenes…

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