Christina Ricci - Actress

Photo courtesy of atpictures.com

One of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, as well as one of the few child stars to make a successful transition to adult roles, CHRISTINA RICCI has been impressing audiences and critics with her unnervingly accurate performances since debuting in the 1990 film "Mermaids."

The daughter of a lawyer and a former Ford model and the youngest of four children, Ricci was born in Santa Monica, California, on February 12, 1980. Following her family's move to New York when she was eight, Ricci got her start acting in commercials. Her big screen debut came shortly after, when director Richard Benjamin cast her as Cher's younger daughter in "Mermaids." 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."

Following a series of films both good and bad, including "Now and Then," in which she played the young Rosie O'Donnell, and the critically panned but commercially successful "Casper," Ricci starred as the troubled, sexually precocious Wendy Hood in Ang Lee's widely praised "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 Dedee, a delightfully loathsome girl who wreaks tabloid-style havoc on everyone she encounters, whether they be dead or alive. For her performance as Dedee, Ricci was nominated for a Golden Globe and attained the unofficial title of the Sundance Film Festival's 1998 "It" Girl. Also in 1998, Ricci had a cameo role in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and voiced one of the Gwendy Dolls in the children's film "Small Soldiers."

Now riding high as an indie teen queen, Ricci went on in 1999 to headline the much-anticipated but ultimately disappointing "200 Cigarettes"; the same year, she could be seen in "Desert Blue," and "Sleepy Hollow," in which she played Gothic princess Katrina Van Tassel opposite Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane in Tim Burton's adaptation of Washington Irving's ghostly tale. She also completed the farcical comedy "No Vacancy."

In 2000, Ricci starred in Sally Potter's "The Man Who Cried," in which she played a young Jewish woman who flees from Germany to Paris during World War II, the supernatural thriller "Bless the Child" opposite Kim Basinger, in which she portrayed an ill-fated cult member, and "Prozac Nation."

For 2001, Ricci appears in "Pumpkin," playing a sorority girl who falls in love with a disabled boy, "All Over the Guy" and "Adrenalin."

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