Despite being named after one of the most successful American brands, Abigail Disney is not drawn to that corporate life.
“I’m kind of an annoying, New York City, Manhattan, left-handed intellectual,” she told The Cut in 2019. “Those are the people who hate Disney and think it’s the worst thing on earth, and there it’s where I would probably be if I had no relationship,” added Abigail Disney, granddaughter of company co-founder Roy Disney.
Here’s a snapshot of the life and career of Abigail Disney, who has also been a filmmaker, philanthropist, and activist.
Growing up at Disney
The daughter of the late Disney executive Roy E. Disney, Abigail grew up visiting Disneyland, which her grandfather Roy O. Disney founded with her younger brother Walt. But she has said her relationship with the company, and with her own family, changed when Disney experienced a resurgence.
“When I went to college, Michael Eisner came in and revitalized the company, and then the stock price, which was basically my family’s total net worth, was 10 times, 20 times, 50 times higher than when I was growing up.” She told The Cut in March 2019.
“So all of a sudden we went from being comfortable, upper-middle-class people, to suddenly my dad had a private jet. That’s when I feel like my dad really lost his way in life. And that’s why I feel hyper-conscious about how wealth affects people. I lived in a family when I was a child, and then I didn’t even recognize the family as I grew up.”
Growing up in Northern California, Disney said, her parents avoided a “luxurious” lifestyle and “there were no private jets and things like that until I grew up.”
Abigail Disney told the Los Angeles Times in 2015 that while she was attending graduate school at Columbia University, taxi drivers would drop her off several blocks from campus for fear of being perceived as a brat.
Disney has been secretive about her inheritance, though she has said she has donated more than $70 million since she turned 21.
Activism
Disney has long been outspoken in its support of liberal causes, frequently using her Twitter account to issue blunt denunciations against former President Donald Trump during his administration.
“All you need to know about Trump is that every time he uses a label on someone else it is because he is worried about being hung up on him,” she tweeted in 2018. “Mentally deranged? Checked”.
She also appeared in videos of the news outlet NowThis expressing her opposition to tax breaks for the wealthy.
“I did nothing to make that money,” Disney said in a 2017 video in which she spoke out against a Republican tax bill. “And yet I’m about to get a lot of help from Congress. You may have heard it called a ‘tax cut.’ And yes, it is a very big tax cut for me, along with other individuals and corporations, mostly at one percent.”
Filmmaker
Abigail Disney is an award-winning filmmaker, but she was reluctant to go into the family business. She told the Los Angeles Times in 2015 that she felt “there would be a horrible level of expectation” if she made movies.
“It drives all the neutrality of people’s reactions to you, and why not? I do not blame them. But still I felt publicly exposed to the idea of failing right there in front of everyone.”
She started her own production company and served as a producer on various documentaries. In 2015, she made her directorial debut with “The Armor of Light,” a documentary about an anti-abortion activist and evangelical minister who eventually emerged as a gun control activist. The film won an Emmy for Best Documentary on Social Issues.
“I was wondering where the serious talk was,” she told The New York Times about why she wanted to broach the issue of gun control. “The two parties just seem to talk to each other. Where was the rational discussion about how morals and values influence?”