Paper Magazine Article
Not even your atypical girl next door, Christina Ricci is a living work of art who
confounds stereotypes and shatters expectations. She has the face of a cherub, with
features borrowed from both Renaissance and Keene paintings, but her sardonic
humor and dark world view elevate her light years beyond everyday ingenue status.
The fact that there's something innately different about Ricci has kept her from
megasuccess, but earned her respect from those who don't think banal teen stardom
is something to cheer about anyway. And, thankfully, she doesn't feel like changing
the situation. "I'd like to get paid well and have a big trailer," the 18-year-old says,
puffing on a cig at Time Cafe. "But that's probably my choice. If I had a personal trainer
and put the right color highlights in my hair and decided to be in teen horror movies, I'd
probably be getting paid more, but I'm too lazy to go through all that shit."
So the costar of big-budget Hollywood flicks like Addams Family Values and Casper-a
Santa Monica-born cutie who was discovered at eight in a school Christmas play-has
emerged into extra-quirky maturity, popping up as the inevitable high point of smaller,
more eccentric flicks-and a lot of them. She was the saucy, sexually curious daughter
with an oddball Thanksgiving prayer in The Ice Storm; the acid-tripping Barbra
Streisand portraitist in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; the amoral, loose-lipped Lolita
Dedee Truitt in The Opposite of Sex; and the impressionable sweetie Vincent Gallo
instructs to love him in Buffalo 66.
Generally tapped either for her vulnerability or her edge ("Well," she says, "all there
are in Hollywood are extremes"), Ricci finally gets to combine the angel and the bitch
in John Waters' folk-art celebration, Pecker, in which she plays the loving,
Laundromat-owning girlfriend of the title character (Edward Furlong). She's the kind of
person who, after Pecker's photographs of raw reality are embraced by New York's
cognoscenti (in a montage, she and Furlong even end up on the cover of PAPER with
the headline, "Art Couple of the Year?"), would rather be working at her Laundromat in
Baltimore than hanging out at B Bar. To Ricci, the movie is a reversal of Gummo,
"which was New Yorkers making fun of what they view as idiotic, small-town people.
Here, these people are making fun of us." But clearly she'd like to turn the tables back
and make fun of them again. "Baltimore's really horrible," she says. "I hated being
there so much. But I felt bad about hating being there because John is so much about
Baltimore. But I just thought it was atrocious."
She's not wild about laundry either, and winces, "We always had to go to a
Laundromat, and I hated doing that." "I'd rather go to church," I interject, and she
agrees, saying, "At least you can sleep in a church. You're safe."
Her character verges on being a recurring laundry joke, with typically campy Waters
dialogue ("You can't dye clothes in here!"). Ricci's approach involves no Methody
fussing or overanxious research. She didn't investigate the history of the spin cycle.
As she puts it, "I sort of go on autopilot and just say my lines, which is what I always
do. I don't develop characters; writers do. You just go in and say your lines and look
right. I don't ad lib. In my job as an actor, I don't have to think-so why ask to have to?"
The girl's either short-selling herself or unwittingly drawing attention to her natural
gifts. Without extraneous B.S., Ricci delivers plain, direct genius. She has a natural
instinct for the camera, and can veer from a doll to a demon with the drop of a
listener's jaw.
Was she the first choice for the part? Apparently not. Ricci says that when some "bitch
actress" was told that Ricci made it into the movie, she said to her, "That's so great! I
told Chloe [Sevigny] she shouldn't have turned down that part!" Ricci takes a puff, then
tells me, "I was like, 'You are an evil cunt.' I mean, I like Chloe, but this other actress is
a fucking whore. It destroyed me for about five minutes, then I was like, 'I hate you.' I
came back and built on my hatred for this girl."
When asked, John Waters diffuses the "first choice" scenario. "There were thousands
of people mentioned for the part," he says, and they kept changing based on logistics.
But he's thrilled to have ended up with Ricci, who he feels is a complete natural. "It's
like when Ricki Lake read the part in Hairspray: she read it exactly right," he says.
"Christina got it [at the audition]-she knew how to say the words I wrote, which is
always a little bit angry and with love. How dull to have a young person who isn't
angry. They can't be angry later in life, but at her age, it's sexy to be angry." Waters
describes Ricci's screen persona as "Tuesday Weld with a chip on her shoulder and a
good sense of humor."
Offscreen, I'm loving that this sweet, angelic face can toss out such sizzling barbs-her
way of expressing impatience with hypocrisy and pretentiousness. I also appreciate
(admittedly with some frustration) that she always stops short of naming names. In
fact, when I ask who's a bad actor, she replies, "That's not nice," and refuses to
answer. She has a kind streak!
Still, she admits, "I always wanted to be an Ayn Rand character. I have a lot of mood
swings." And if people think she's really like the heartless Dedee in The Opposite of
Sex-though she isn't-that's O.K. with her. "I always wanted to be like that when I was
little," she says. "I think it's funny to say inappropriate things." (In fact, she said "tits
and ass" on The View after a producer instructed her to "make sparks.") "I never knew
that mongoloid was an offensive thing, for example. I assumed it was the same as
calling someone a retard." I inform her that retard isn't all that correct either, and she
balks, "Yeah, but everyone says retard."
You don't argue with Christina Ricci-why would you? And as she unleashes her teeny
likes and dislikes-if I can segue into my Tiger Beat mode-they sound perfectly
appropriate. She hates theater and says, "The whole time you're concentrating on
really enjoying it so you won't hate yourself for being there." She likes art, but while
she once almost bought a painting for $8,000, she decided to rent an apartment
instead. She likes getting good writeups, "but it doesn't really mean much." She loves
cheesy teen films-the kind she's never in-and raced to see Wild Things. ("Denise
Richards is practically naked the entire movie. And you see Kevin Bacon's
dick-full-frontal nudity!") She liked the first half of Titanic, "but I had no desire to put in
the second tape. I decided I already know what happens. Everyone dies except for a
couple of rich people and Rose. I don't like watching children die."
And she also loves tabloids, but with a healthy, postmodern perspective. While she
enjoys the presidential sex scandals, she says, "I think most people cheat on their
spouses. Because it's the president shouldn't make a difference. Who cares?" When I
bring up a much larger loyalty issue-Ginger Spice's departure from the Spice Girls-she
rolls her eyes and smiles, "I could really care less about Ginger Spice. That's one thing
I don't have to worry about in my life. The only one I like is Posh Spice. She goes out
with a soccer star. I respect that." "Posh Spice probably slept her way into the group," I
gratuitously add, and Ricci smirks, "No, I think Baby Spice did."
Oh, she also likes getting free outfits from designers, but she's discovered that some
of them make horrible, cheapo clothes. "They look really pretty," she says, "and then
you wear them for five seconds and they're completely wrinkled and the zipper
breaks. So I'm glad, because I'll know what to avoid in the future." Again, no names.
I did finally get a few, though. Her boyfriend is an actor/DJ named Matthew, and, Ricci
adds, "He was one of my good friend's roommates. I went to stay with her and I ended
up staying with him instead." Oh, and her next movie is called 200 Cigarettes, in which
she and Gaby Hoffman play a pair of Long Island girls. Ricci's mad that they didn't give
her an accent coach, only a tape, and says, "I had to think about every word as I said it,
so I don't think I'm very good in it. It was so ridiculous."
Still, she enjoys making movies, and has ever since her first, Mermaids, in 1990. She's
about to start shooting Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, in which she stars opposite
Johnny Depp. "I still love acting," she says, "but when I was little, it was the greatest
thing on earth. I got out of school, I got tons of attention from everybody on the set and
I was being paid to do something I thought was so idiotic." I'm glad you're still doing it,
Christina. The idiocy has a touch of pure magic to it.