Christina Ricci Biography

Christina Ricci (born February 12, 1980) is an Emmy Award-nominated American actress who first achieved fame for her role as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family (1991), and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993).

Christina Ricci's movie roles have ranged from art house films such as The Ice Storm (1997), dramas such as Monster (2004), independent comedies such as The Opposite of Sex (1998), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, and blockbusters such as Sleepy Hollow (1999).

Christina Ricci endured the transition from a child star to teenage idol and adult actress and currently holds her own production company, Blaspheme Films, responsible for Pumpkin and Prozac Nation. She has recently appeared in Black Snake Moan (2007) and Penelope (2008), and stars as Trixie, the female lead role in the The Wachowski Brothers' feature film adaptation of Speed Racer, in 2008..

Christina Ricci Picture Gallery

Biography

Christina Ricci was born in Santa Monica, California, the fourth and youngest child of Sarah (née Murdoch), a former Ford Model and real estate agent, and Ralph Ricci, a lawyer and psychiatrist. Regarding her ancestry, Ricci has stated that "the Italian blood has been bred out of me. There's an Italian four or five generations back who married an Irish woman and they all had sons. So they married more Irish women, there were more sons, and more Irish women. Now I'm basically Scots-Irish."

Christina Ricci's family was reasonably financially comfortable from its inception; her father, before becoming a lawyer, was a psychiatrist who specialized in shrieking therapy. While a child, Christina could hear the therapies through the vents in her room, and would act them out in front of her mother. The family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where she grew up attending Edgemont Elementary School, Glenfield Middle School, and Montclair High School as well as the Morristown-Beard School. After one year she left the high school for a private school in New York City (the Professional Children's School), which was also attended by various other celebrities such as Sarah Michelle Gellar, Macaulay Culkin, and Jerry O'Connell. Her siblings are Rafael (born 1971), Dante (born 1974), and Pia (born 1976). When her father and her mother eventually separated in 1993, Ricci stayed with her mother, who took custody of the children. Ricci has not spoken to her father since this took place in 1993. Of her siblings, she is closest to her brother Rafael. After her parents' divorce, Ricci experimented with self-injury, and began cutting herself as a child as she felt that she couldn't handle her body developing—Ricci stated that this problem affected her self esteem as a young teenager.

A critic for the Bergen Record discovered Christina Ricci at age eight in a school play (The Twelve Days of Christmas) at Edgemont School in Montclair, New Jersey. The critic's son was originally cast in the role, but Ricci got him to hit her and told on him; he lost the role to her as part of his punishment. After this, she became involved in the movie business. She did several commercials starting at the age of six, until she finally got her big screen debut in Richard Benjamin's Mermaids in 1990 (alongside Cher, Bob Hoskins, and Winona Ryder) as Cher's younger daughter. Although much critical and commercial attention went to Ryder, who played Ricci's older sister, the young actress made enough of an impression to land more work; later she appeared in the video of the film's soundtrack "The Shoop Shoop Song". The following year, she starred as the morbidly precocious Wednesday Addams in the hit film adaptation of The Addams Family. The role would help to establish Ricci as an actress known for playing dark, unconventional characters – she went on to play Wednesday again in the film's 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values – which became another box office draw, and more screen time was provided for Ricci's performance as Wednesday, due to her success.

After this, Christina Ricci popularity increased dramatically, and she became in high demand by the mid-1990s. Her next project, Casper, received mixed critical reviews, but was a major success at the box office, being the year's seventh highest grossing film. After Casper, she starred in Now and Then, a coming-of-age film about four 12-year-old girls and their friendship during the 1970s to the 1990s. Now and Then was another box office success, and received favourable comparisons to Stand by Me, being called "the female version" of the film, and Christina was becoming a top box office draw. She also starred in a handful of other films with teenage roles such as Golddiggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain and That Darn Cat.