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Christina Ricci (born February 12, 1980) is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominated American actress. Ricci began performing as a child actress, starring alongside Winona Ryder and Cher in Mermaids. Her breakout role was as Wednesday Addams in the successful Addams Family films. Ricci began appearing in more mature roles after 1997's The Ice Storm.

Born
February 12, 1980 (age 26)Santa Monica, California, USA
Notable roles
The Addams Family (1991)Addams Family Values (1993)The Opposite of Sex (1998)Sleepy Hollow (1999)Monster (2003)

Biography

Early life

Ricci was born in Santa Monica, California, the fourth child of Ralph Ricci and Sarah Murdoch. Regarding her ancestry, Ricci has noted that "the Italian blood has been bred out of [her]. 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"[citation needed]. Her father, before becoming a lawyer, was a psychiatrist who specialized in shrieking therapy. While growing up, 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. She left the high school for a private school in New York City after one year [1]. Her siblings are Rafael (born 1971), Dante (born 1974), and Pia (born 1976). When her father and her mother, a former fashion model who now works in the real estate business, eventually separated in 1993, she stayed with her mother who took custody of the children. Ricci has not spoken to her father since this took place in 1993.[1]

Early roles

A critic for the Bergen Record discovered 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 (1990) alongside Cher, Bob Hoskins, and Winona Ryder, as Cher's younger daughter. Although much attention went to Winona Ryder, who played Ricci's older sister, the young actress made enough of an impression to land more work: 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.

After this, her popularity increased dramatically, and she became in high demand by the mid-1990s. Her next project was the box office hit Casper, which was critically panned. After Casper, she starred in Now and Then, a coming-of-age film about four 12-year-old girls and their friendship from the 1970s to the 1990s. Now and Then was another box office success, and Christina was becoming a top box office draw for every film she starred in. She also starred in a handful of other films with teenage roles such as Golddiggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain and That Darn Cat.

Later films

In 1997, Ricci began to appear in more "mature" adult roles, beginning with her role as the troubled, sexually curious Wendy Hood in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm. The actress handled the part with uncanny maturity, leading many observers to conclude that she was truly beginning to come into her own. This assessment was solidified with Ricci's subsequent roles in films like Buffalo '66 (in which she played Vincent Gallo's unwitting abductee-turned-girlfriend), John Waters' Pecker, and Don Roos' The Opposite of Sex, the last of which cast her as Dee Dee, a delightfully loathsome girl who wreaks tabloid-style havoc on everyone she encounters. For her performance as Dede, Ricci was nominated for a Golden Globe and attained the unofficial title of the Sundance Film Festival's 1998 "It" Girl.

Later films included Sleepy Hollow, Monster, and Prozac Nation. Ricci had to turn down the role of Ronna in Go (1999) because of scheduling conflicts; the role eventually went to Sarah Polley. She was turned down four times for the role of Dolores Haze in Lolita (1997), which eventually went to Dominique Swain. Ricci was originally slated to play the lead in Ghost World (2001), but by the time it was filmed she was too old for the part and had moved on to other projects. Thora Birch took over the role. Ricci has also begun producing films. In February of 2006, Ricci made a guest appearance as a paramedic in the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy, for which she was nominated for an Emmy award.

On December 4, 1999, she appeared as the guest host on Saturday Night Live, and performed parodies of Britney Spears and the Olsen twins (her older sister made a special appearance during her monologue at the begining of the show). During one of her skits, she accidentally punched actress Ana Gasteyer in the face. The skit was a parody of the Sally Jessy Raphael show, in which she played a 13-year-old runaway who sleeps with dogs, and required her to fake-punch Gasteyer, but accidentally hit her for real. Although Gasteyer initially reacted by putting her hands over her mouth in surprise, she quickly fell back into character.

In 2006, Ricci stated that she feels that she is "too short" to ever be an A-list actress, saying she tends "to look really small on camera".[2] She has also said that she believes that she does not have much control over her career, specifying that she still has to audition for film parts.[3] Her next film, the drama Black Snake Moan, co-stars Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Timberlake and is scheduled to open on February 16, 2007.

Personal life

Ricci owns her own production company, Blaspheme Films, responsible for Prozac Nation and Pumpkin.

She dated fellow actor Adam Goldberg until the end of 2005. The couple reportedly sold the house they had together when they broke up. Since August 2006 the couple has been seen back together and Christina wears a gold necklace with an anchor that bears the initials AG. Christina said in an interview that it was "fate" that she and Adam were back together.[citation needed]
Ricci is on the national board of VOX-Voices for Planned Parenthood, which works to promote the mission of Planned Parenthood to young adults. She will also be appearing in national ads for Emergency Contraception. She supported John Kerry's presidential bid in 2004.[4]

Tattoos

Christina has several tattoos including a bouquet of sweet peas on her lower back, a pair of praying hands on her hip (this used to be a bat but she has since had it covered), a fairy on her inner wrist, a sparrow on her lower right breast, a lion (from The Chronicles of Narnia) on her shoulder blade, the name "Jack" on her right thigh, and the words "Move Or Bleed" on the left side of her rib cage.[citation needed]

Dress

After making the top of PETA's 2006 worst-dress list and a letter from PETA, Christina decided to give up wearing fur.[5]