Dawn Greenhalgh, Voice of Babar's Queen Celeste, Dies at 93

Dawn Greenhalgh, the actress whose voice gave Queen Celeste her warmth and authority in the animated series Babar, has died. She was 93. The Hollywood Reporter reported the death on 13 November 2026.

Greenhalgh died on 6 November at her home in Toronto. She was born Hazel Dawn Greenhalgh on 25 September 1933, in Shanghai, China.

She spent most of her career on Canadian stages and screens. She was a founding cast member of the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, the theatre company that has run there since 1953. Her work reached a much wider audience through television.

From 1989 to 1991, she voiced Queen Celeste across five seasons of Babar. The series was a CBC and Nelvana production, based on the picture books created by Jean de Brunhoff. The show followed the elephant king and his family, and Celeste was one of its central figures.

Two decades later, she returned to the role. In 2010 and 2011, Greenhalgh and fellow actor Gordon Pinsent reprised their parts for the sequel Babar and the Adventures of Badou. Fans of the original series got to hear the characters again, and a new generation of viewers met them too.

Greenhalgh's family includes another well-known screen name. Her youngest daughter is the actress Megan Follows, who played Anne Shirley in three Anne of Green Gables miniseries.

Voice work like Greenhalgh's rarely gets the spotlight. Actors record their lines in short sessions, often without the cast ever sharing a room. Yet those recordings are what children return to, year after year, on repeat. For many viewers, Queen Celeste will sound like Greenhalgh for as long as the episodes are played.

She is remembered as a stage actor who helped build a theatre company, a television voice who gave an animated queen her character, and a mother whose daughter also became a familiar face on screen.