Broadway actor James Barbour, 41, accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl at a theater and in his home in 2001, pleaded guilty Thursday to two misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.

James Barbour, who played the beast in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” was starring on Broadway in “Jane Eyre” in June 2001 when he met the 15-year-ol girl, reports the Associated Press.

She was an aspiring actress and attended a show he was performing in with her parents. After the show, she came backstage alone. The actor admitted in court that he touched her sexually. The next month, the teenage girl visited his Upper West Side apartment, where sexual touching occurred once more, he admitted in court.

When Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Micki Scherer asked him if he was aware the girl was 15, he said he knew.

The teenager, now 21, accused Barbour of sexual abuse two years ago. He argued it took her five years to make such charges because she had learned that he had recently inherited a large amount of money.

The New York Daily News reports that the actor’s lawyer, Ronald P. Fischetti, said in December 2006: “She left NYU, she's working in a bakery, she's completely out of money. The motivation has to be because he's coming into money, and because he's becoming a Broadway star.”

Barbour will receive 60 days in jail and three years probation when he is sentenced Feb. 29. Because the counts are misdemeanors, he will not have to register as a sex offender.

Barbour’s lawyer explained that he pleaded guilty because he wanted to put the case behind him and to continue his work.

"By pleading guilty to misdemeanors, he doesn't have to register (as a sex offender), and that's important,” Fischetti was quoted by the AP as saying. “He wouldn't have been able to travel without reporting, and he wouldn't have been able to work with children.”

Fischetti currently has a case before the state Court of Appeals seeking permission to publish the victim's name in ads that ask men to report whether she ever filed false sex abuse charges against them.