UK Daily Express - 12/12/00

Wednesdays Child

Christina Ricci is far more fragile than the dark star Hollywood would have you believe. BY JOHN LYTTLE

Christina Ricci is a chain-smoker. Has been for years. At least since her difficult father divorced her mother, a former Ford model. From, that is, about the age of 13, five years after she started appearing in commercials and when she was already a Hollywood star with two Addams Family films behind her... But, "No," Ricci tells me when I ask if she was pushed too young. "I wasn't pushed into anything. The moment I started acting, I knew it was the only job for me."

We're at the Dorchester in London.

Ricci's sliding a coffin nail from its packet when I pop the question: "Do you still stub cigarettes on your arms?" Ricci lights up and exhales a wisp of blue smoke. Very matter-of-fact: "I wouldn't call it a phase, but it isn't what I do today. A lot of teenage girls did it. Do it. It's like some girls cut. You've heard about cutting?" I nod. "It was about control. Control and the body." She shrugs. "I'm not anorexic any more either." She doesn't look it. At 5ft 1in and wearing a tight red top, we're talking pocket Venus.

Ricci seems to have put behind her the New Jersey childhood that seems far from normal. Her father Ralph's work - he specialized in primal scream therapy - meant that the Ricci children (Christina is the youngest of four) got used to hearing his patients express their inner pain from the basement surgery in their home.

But his profession wasn't the only problem. Aged 57 when Christina was born, he had a character she has described as "paranoid" and taught his children to trust no one. Perhaps as a result the children learned to live fairly independent lives early on.

"Have you ever taken Prozac?" I ask, because Ricci's next film is the eagerly anticipated screen version of Elizabeth Wurtzel's Prozac Nation, but also because somehow it doesn't seem entirely unlikely.

She's still unruffled: "No. I've never been clinically depressed." Pause. Smile. "Not that I know of." I plough on. "Are you talking to your father yet?" The actress keeps cool. "Yes. No. Not that I know of." The last sentence isn't said in a mean way. Ricci sounds thoughtful. She is thoughtful. Also a trifle bored. Let's move on: "Anything about the movie? About The Man Who Cried?" Plenty. It's Ricci's 30th flick and in the highbrow melodrama manner only director Sally Potter, who made 1992's Orlando and 1997's The Tango Lesson can hypnotically manage. The film tells the story of Suzie, a young Russian Jew burnt from her village and searching for her father throughout a childhood in England and entrapment in Paris as the Nazis goose-step into the City of Light.

Teamed with best friend - and male counterpart in career choices - Johnny Depp for a third time, Ricci is a revelation. Those expecting another of the sardonic modern vixens which have made her a hot name with hip audiences (scheming Dedee Truitt in The Opposite Of Sex, Lucy in Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Wendy Hood in The Ice Storm) and earned Ricci the title of "Queen of Independent Film" will be confounded by the virtuoso control displayed.

Who'd have thought Christina Ricci would work so brilliantly in period drama? Her Renaissance portrait prettiness appears as otherworldly and impeccably right here as it did against the starkly ornate backdrops of Sleepy Hollow. I don't mention that independent, cult film-maker John Waters recently described her as "delicate".

"Suzie is closer to who I am than any character I've played since Wednesday in The Addams Family. Wednesday was a watcher too. Suzie watches, figures things out."

The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values catapulted Ricci to international fame at the tender age of 11. She was remarkably convincing strapping her younger brother into an electric chair and drolly remarking: "We are now going to play 'Is There a God?'" You couldn't imagine a Winona Ryder or a Drew Barrymore engaging in such games. Or doing what Wendy Hood did in The Ice Storm: wearing a President Nixon mask to lose her virginity.

So I find myself expressing surprise about the "watching". The adolescent girls who claim her as a resolutely un-Hollywood role model are better used to Ricci being hyperactive and bitterly honest. Anything, indeed, but a passive observer. Theirs is the Ricci who is said to have gained weight and wouldn't leave the house in case passers-by shouted: "You're disgusting." The Ricci who gleefully lent her voice to the Barbie-Gone-Bad Gweny dolls in Small Soldiers. The Ricci who brushes away studio offers of big money in bad teen fare with "I was Casper the Friendly Ghost's girlfriend. That's enough." The Ricci who popped up in a Moby video as a mock Virgin Mary and dubbed her production company Blaspheme Films.

"Oh, that was a joke," the lady protests. "Because I'm sarcastic. I enjoy being sarcastic and saying wild things like I wear fur and incest is cool. I'm kidding, but people take it seriously. Blaspheme is..." The smile is a parody: "Ironic."

OK. But didn't you say of vixen Dedee Truitt in The Opposite Of Sex: "When I read the part, I was like Dedee's so much like me." (For the record, Dedee blackmails, nearly commits murder and seduces her gay half-brother's airhead lover.) "I said that when I was 17 and cast as an angry teenager. I was an angry teenager. I was in synch when I did The Opposite Of Sex. Or..." Or? "Or I was wearing a mask. You do at different times, most days. My work is real - I'm instinctive - but there's a mask for business, a mask for the street."

And a mask for right now? I wouldn't blame her. Every time Ricci drops her guard she feels she's misunderstood. She cites a recent interview in a certain weekend magazine as proof positive: "I thought, why is this writer trying to make me and my family seem..." I've read the piece so can easily supply the next word: "Tragic?" "Exactly. I'm not. But everyone brings their perceptions. Look, it's just the usual teenage girl stuff."

Sure. But most teenage girls aren't given platforms to talk about it. Maybe most teenage girls wouldn't talk about it. "Why not? I haven't done anything I'm ashamed of. The cigarettes, the anorexia? I'm not ashamed. Girls need to know that happens and that they're not alone."

Besides, she isn't a teenager any more. Ricci turned 20 in 2000, Blaspheme made its first film, Pumpkin, and her three-year relationship with waiter Matthew Frauman burnt out like the cigarette she's just discarded. Growing up, like breaking up, is hard to do.

But maybe Ricci's not quite the adult yet. "I'm calmer and quieter," she says. And definitely acts, until I sheepishly hand over an early Christmas box from Lush, a small token by way of saying thanks for being one of the few current reasons to attend the cinema.

The response is enchantingly giggly: "From Lush? I love Lush. Does it have bath bombs? After the premiere I'm going straight back to the hotel I'm really staying at and using a bath bomb." Christina Ricci nearly gives me a hug before thinking better of it. She's mature now. I make do with a handshake. It's very firm.