News thread.

[andrew r]

From an interview with LA Times.com

It's a confident Christina Ricci on-screen and off
A CHANGE IN COURSE: Ricci says she didn’t fully enjoy her success until she learned to shed her self-consciousness. I came to understand that I had not been fully living my life before,” she says.
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She's cast youthful doubts aside to rise to whatever the role may bring -- even it means wearing a pig nose.
By Pamela Chelin, Special to The Times
January 13, 2008
CHRISTINA RICCI'S new film, "Penelope," has a lot of parallels to the actress' own journey to self-discovery and self-acceptance -- minus the pig snout, of course.

Her blond-streaked hair is cut into a bob that frames her delicate face, making her green eyes seem even larger, like endless seas. In a room at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons Hotel, Ricci sips from a bottle of water as she talks about the title character in this modern-day fairy tale from first-time feature director Mark Palansky about a young woman born under a curse that leaves her with a snout for a nose. To protect her from ridicule, her parents (Catherine O'Hara and Richard E. Grant) never let her outside as they search for a blue-blood suitor to break the curse.

"I like her strength," Ricci says, "and the fact that given this situation, being inside for 25 years and having this pig snout, she was really funny. She made the best out of it and she kind of knew who she was in a way that a lot of people don't."

That's a place it took Ricci awhile to find for herself. "Her journey is a succinct version of the journey that we all get to where we're no longer crippled by our insecurities. When I was younger and I was just starting to become successful," she says, "I was not able to experience it and I was not able to enjoy it because I was so busy hating myself. I was so busy being uncomfortable in my own skin, being self-conscious. I got to a point, now, where you have to say, 'I am going to have to let go of self-consciousness because it's not helping me.' When I did that, I came to understand that I had not been fully living my life before."

Because of her appearance, Penelope is swarmed by the morbidly curious. Ricci too deals with her share of attention. "People know where I live in Los Angeles," she says. "I do have, sometimes, a lot of people come and wait for me to leave the house for the day and follow me, which, to me, is just kind of funny because I don't do anything. I run errands and I'm thinking, 'This can't be entertaining for you.' "

Now comfortable with her fame, Ricci possesses an interesting point of view about her celebrity. "I have seen recognition in people's faces when they look at me since I was 9 or 10 years old, so, to me, nothing about that is weird," says the actress who was 10 when she starred with Cher in "Mermaids" and went on to do "The Addams Family" and "Casper" as a youngster. "My view more is that I just feel really safe in the world because I feel like everybody knows me. So it all seems like a neighborhood, just my big neighborhood," she says and laughs. "But, I would imagine that if you never lived your life like that then someone's curiosity in you might feel extremely intrusive."

Actress Reese Witherspoon is among the producers of the film, which opens Feb. 29, as well as a costar. "For a while, I thought about playing Penelope, but I thought I was a little too old," Witherspoon says by phone from Vancouver, Canada, where she is starring in and producing "Four Christmases." "Christina has such a sense of self-possession and a spirit to her. She's indomitable."

As a producer, Witherspoon was active in developing the script with screenwriter Leslie Caveny, securing finances and working hands-on on the set. "After being in the business for so many years and learning so much about physical production and development of scripts and working with writers developing ideas, I think it was a natural progression," Witherspoon said.

Ricci, a producer herself with credits on "Pumpkin" and "Prozac Nation," appreciated working with one of the highest paid actresses as producer. "With actors, there's somewhat of a common language that everybody can understand. Reese was able to show me things in the film that needed to be reshot and explain it to me in a way that would be easier, with shorthand, more so than with a director or just any producer."

The two emphasize "Penelope's" message for young women. "The main theme," says Ricci, "is that you cannot allow your insecurities or anybody else's negative things they put on you to keep you from being happy and from really experiencing life. I think this sort of thing needs to be established very young."

Witherspoon says, "I am always looking for projects that represent young women in a way that opens up ideas about what is beauty and what is valuable about women. . . . It's important to put these positive messages out to young women."

I love that last quote from Christina. I wonder if her and Reese will work together again on another film?

Link

[andrew r]

From smh.au.com via the Sun Herald:

Christine Sams, January 14, 2008

Christina Ricci might have enjoyed a romantic break with Kick Gurry in Sydney over the festive season, but she was still aware of the goings-on in Hollywood, particularly in relation to troubled stars, including Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

Ricci, 27, expressed sympathy for Spears and Co, saying the media scrutiny surrounding their private lives was too much.

"I really think the scrutiny is what makes these girls go to the extremes they go to," Ricci said.

"People break up or have divorces and then realise they go a little crazy, usually for about a year. But if you have somebody documenting it the whole time and people judging it, it might make it worse - it might lead to other dangerous things.

"I think that's something to consider when people think about the current 'train wrecks'. What they're going through at the core is something we all go through, but the scrutiny of it, the magnitude - the world stage that they're on - I think it's just making it worse."

Ricci says when she was younger, partying with other well-known stars, there was noticeably less intrusion.

"The thing that was different [when I was younger] was that we didn't have paparazzi following us to clubs," Ricci said. "We got to go to parties all over and nobody would take pictures.

"You could do something really outrageous and it might end up in a gossip column, but there weren't photos. That's instead of waking up the next day and knowing the entire world is waking up and seeing pictures."

Ricci said the shame of being seen that way in public perpetuated the problems experienced by many stars. "That kind of shame ... you're embarrassed, then you're ashamed, then that leads to more abuse, more drinking and more self-destructive behaviour," she said.

Ricci, who stars in the film Penelope, due out later this year, said she was determined to make films that helped women and young girls feel better about themselves.

I guess it's Christina saying how the media interest has now changed, more than her supporting Britney. I'll post the pic up in another thread.

Link

[andrew r]

Great interview, I'm looking to see if it was printed in their magazine.

Christina Ricci aka Miss Weird wises up

As a teen starlet she had a history of anorexia and self-harm; but Christina Ricci is older and smarter now.
For someone whose life has unfolded under the unremitting glare of public attention, Christina Ricci remains curiously enigmatic. The 27-year-old Californian first graced the screen back in 1990, playing Cher’s daughter in Mermaids, and she lived out her adolescence in the cinematic spotlight. Characters like Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family, Wendy Hood in The Ice Storm, Layla in Buffalo ’66, and Katrina Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow, helped to form an impressive and rather distinctive body of work early in her career, and yet they also helped to create an image of Ricci that is at odds with the actress’s perception of herself.

Ricci’s latest film, Penelope, is a modern-day fairytale in which Ricci plays the eponymous heroine, whose family is suffering from a curse that demands the family’s firstborn daughter be born with the face of a pig. Sadly for Penelope, she is the firstborn girl. “I love fairytales and that’s what first appealed to me about this,” she says. “This is obviously a contemporary take, but as with many fairytales, there’s some relevance for a lot of people. Part of this movie is definitely for young girls and boys, about loving themselves, and valuing their self-esteem.

“But also the story puts a real value on individuality. We live in a society where we try to tell everyone about how they should look, and what they should wear, and we have all those makeover shows where we try and get everyone to look the same, and this is a movie where we try and say that all the characters are great, they are very different, and we love them. Even though some of them are weird.”

Ricci was an early queen of weird. Perhaps it is the contrast so evident in her features – her sweet, heartshaped face, which is currently framed by a rather natty bob, and her melodic, girlish voice are both offset by her deep brown eyes. Those pools of ambiguity once prompted the Sleepy Hollow director Tim Burton to remark that “when she looks at you, you get a definite feeling, but you’re not quite sure what that feeling is”. Ricci just smiles; she feels as though she is credited with far too much worldly wisdom.

“People think I’m wise beyond my years, and that I’m not that innocent or naive,” she says in a quiet corner of a Beverly Hills hotel bar, “and yet I feel incredibly young, and not jaded at all. Every time something new happens, or doing all the travelling I do with the job, I still get very excited. I’m a bit like a kid. When I was little, people always thought that I was very grown-up, yet I actually feel like I am a really late bloomer, emotionally at least.”

Ricci is 28 next month, and says she feels settled. She talks openly about many aspects of her private life, including the eating disorder, and the propensity to self-harm, which scarred her youth. These emotional conflicts are extremely complex, although she says that neither was in any way engendered by [[ her proximity to Hollywood. “When I was doing press for Penelope in America, they led with me talking about anorexia, but all I had done was to acknowledge that it had happened, and that was only in one interview,” she says.

“In fact, really the anorexia came when I was young and was trying dieting and stuff. When I heard about anorexia on TV I thought, ‘I could do that.’ So I did. And I was quite successful. Really, recently, all I’ve done is espouse how the industry saved me in a lot of ways. My difficulties as a teenager had much more to do with real life than with my job.”

While for many young actors Tinseltown offers an emotional obstacle course, for Ricci it provided a sanctuary from the stresses of everyday life. “I find regular life and the growing pains of being a human being far more difficult than being on a set or going to auditions,” she explains. “I’d rather be in a work environment that I’ve known since I was 9 years old.”

That environment provided shelter during her parents’ divorce in 1991, when Ricci was just 12, although she refuses to bemoan her situation.

The youngest of four children, Ricci grew up in California with her psychiatrist father, who practised primal scream therapy in the family’s basement, and her mother, who was a model with the Ford agency. She admits that she is vain herself but does not blame her mother for that, or indeed for any of the problems that plagued her teenage years.

“In terms of being honest about who I am and what I’ve gone through, I do think there’s a real benefit to talking about it, for other people who go through similar things,” she offers. “When I was a teenager, reading about singers or actresses who had gone through something and made a change in their life, I’d find that really inspiring. We are all human beings and it’s so judgmental to keep everything you have gone through and who you are to yourself. I try and be open and find empathy with people.”

There is little doubt that this empathy has boosted her career, marrying with her own ambiguous qualities to provide a vital ingredient in her on-screen alchemy. Unlike many child stars, Ricci has made a seamless transition to adult success, a fact that can be attributed, in part at least, to the characters that she’s played, but also, she says, to serendipity.

“A lot of it has to do with timing,” she smiles. “There used to be this problem when you got to around 13-15: it becomes quite hard to get parts, because the studios would hire people who were 18 or over. Then they didn’t have to pay for tutoring, and they could work them adult hours. But just as I hit that age, independent film really took off, and the power of the director and his vision came back. So then you had film-makers who wanted teenagers to play teenagers, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

In truth, her performances in films such as The Ice Storm, Buffalo ’66and The Opposite of Sexinvolved her summoning an on-screen angst that would have surprised even the most troubled adolescent, and after a brief wobble at the turn of the century, with the likes of Prozac Nation and The Gathering, she has evolved into an extremely accomplished actress. She mustered a fine performance in Monster (2003), for which Charlize Theron won her Oscar, and she positively sizzled playing the troubled nymphomaniac Rae in Black Snake Moanlast year, an experience she enjoyed immensely.

“In one of the sex scenes Justin [Timberlake] and I did together I had no underwear on, just a shirt,” she chuckles, “and he said later that he was really shocked by that!”

Inquiries into her love life are met with a soft smile. “I’ve learnt not to talk about that particular part of my personal life. Sorry,” she says. The actor-director Adam Goldberg blamed the demise of his and Ricci’s relationship on the amount of time Ricci spent with Timberlake. She won’t be drawn. “The press do sometimes twist things and make things much worse. I want to concentrate on my career. I’m still very ambitious, and I’m really proud of the films I’ve made recently.”

Later this year Ricci will be seen in Speed Racer,an adaptation of the classic Sixties manga cartoon series by the reclusive directors of The Matrix trilogy, Andy and Larry Wachowski. “That was amazing,” she beams, “and it’s nothing at all like The Matrix.But I got to do so much cool stuff and I think I had the best moment of my career there. I learnt to do a cart-wheel where I’d grab a gun as I did it and then land and fire. I only want to do action movies now!”

She is of course joking. At least that’s the perception, although one can never be entirely sure. Ricci remains curiously enigmatic – and you sense she likes it that way.

Penelope is released on February 1

RICCI PICKINGS – HIGHLIGHTS OF A CURIOUS CAREER

THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1991)

Ricci made her big-screen debut aged 10 alongside Cher and Winona Ryder in 1990’s Mermaids, but this was the film that earned her individual plaudits. Icily cruel and hilariously deadpan, her performance as Wednesday stole the show from such illustrious co-stars as Anjelica Huston.

THE ICE STORM (1997)

The first role that Ricci actively coveted: the wayward teen in Ang Lee’s tale of 1970s suburban dislocation. Seducing the boy next door (Elijah Wood) – and his younger brother – she cultivated an aura of precocity that would serve her well in the following year’s The Opposite of Sex.

SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999)

More Gothic flourishes for a corseted Ricci in Tim Burton’s stylised period mystery. Following Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and preceding The Man Who Cried (2000), it was the second of her three collaborations with Johnny Depp, whom she first met as a 9-year-old through Ryder.

MONSTER (2003)

Charlize Theron hogged the headlines as the serial killer Eileen Wuornos, but Ricci, then 23, came of age in the arguably more challenging role of Selby, Wuornos’s conflicted young lover. Theron went on to win an Oscar; Ricci, scandalously, was not even nominated.

Link

[andrew r]

Penelope review and small interview.

Silk purse out of pig’s snout

Jan 25 2008 by Karen McLauchlan, Evening Gazette
Penelope

IT MAY seem a pretty extraordinary comparison to make but the actress Christina Ricci is adamant that she wants to make it.

In her latest movie she plays the eponymous PENELOPE, a woman born with an extremely prominent pig’s snout.

Comparing the character and herself, the 27-year-old Santa Monica-born actress says: “I’ve been working as an actress since I was a child. I’ve never felt famous and don’t remember much of a life before I was an actress, so to me this is my life.

“When there is nothing to compare it to, you don’t really notice the difference.

“Penelope has been kept behind the closed doors of her mansion since she was a child, for fear the tabloid press might see the daughter of a couple of billionaires and make a great deal out of the fact that she has a snout instead of a nose.

“So, like me with my acting, her life has been secretive but, as it’s the only life she has ever had, perfectly normal in her eyes.”

There are, of course, different degrees of normality. Although exceptional in some people’s eyes, Christina’s life of acting (and more acting) is surely very normal compared to that of a billionaire’s daughter with a snout for a nose.

That said, Christina definitely stands out from the crowd.

She’s been acting since she was a tot and first came to prominence as an 11-year-old playing Wednesday Addams in the movie The Addams Family in 1991.

What makes her particularly unusual has been her ability to smoothly move from kids’ roles to young person’s roles to adult parts - from The Addams Family through Sleepy Hollow to the 25-year-old Penelope.

“Penelope is very creative and has found ways to decorate her world, and her room is this gorgeous, really fantastic playroom,” says Christina. “She is very idealistic and very naive for her age because she hasn’t ever been out in the world.

“Basically all she just wants is very simple - to have a life like everyone else.”

As for the question of the nose, something as key to the movie was obviously much debated.

“I wanted something pretty cute, if I am perfectly honest, and to be begin with it wasn’t like that at all,” she says.

“I was sent drawings of the pig’s nose, along with the script so I had an idea of what it would look like and we tried several versions of the pig nose.

“The first one was really hideous and pretty shocking - I always visualised it as being more of a cute little pig’s nose and that’s what we eventually ended up with.”

Christina, who has developed a reputation as an activist in Hollywood (she is American spokesperson for RAINN, The Rape, Abuse And Incest National Network) thinks audiences will love this fairy tale which has a very slightly skewed sense of humour.

“I think people will fall in love with Penelope and, of course, feel a great deal of sympathy for her. Oh sure, she’s led a cosseted and privileged life but to be denied a wide spectrum of opportunities will, I’m sure, make people feel sorry for her.”

Link

[andrew r]

New one for today:

Christina happy to be a bit kooky

Jan 28 2008 by Katie Campling, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

CHRISTINA Ricci has always been a little different. From her first most memorable role as sadistic Wednesday in the Addam’s family at age 11, her choice of parts have more often than not, been left field and off the Hollywood blockbuster radar.

So it’s no surprise then that the 27-year-old self-assured actress – today sporting a razor-sharp, light-brown bob instead of her usual long, dark tresses – is appearing in yet another ‘kooky’ role. In next week’s release Penelope, she is a girl who ended up with a pig’s nose and ears as the result of a family curse in the fairytale movie produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Type A production company.

“What I really loved about Penelope is the character,” explains the diminutive star. “When I started reading it, I liked the idea of a fairytale, as it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I really liked her character. I thought it was great that she was able to find humour in a situation that other people would be devastated by.”

Penelope’s wealthy parents Jessica (Catherine O’Hara) and Franklin Wilhern (Richard E Grant) keep her locked away in their mansion for her own protection – scared that her freaky face will create fear and panic among the general public. In a bid to try to reverse the curse which can only be broken when she finds love, they regularly invite blue-blooded suitors into the family home to try to marry off Penelope. All the men react in shock and horror when they see her face, all except one, Max played by James McAvoy, “an amazing and consummate professional,” according to Christina.

“I thought it was just going to be a sort of traditional romance about finding Prince Charming,” she admits. “Then when it wasn’t, I was totally surprised. It really caught me off guard.

“I was just so excited because it was just such a great message and so succinctly presented, that I thought, I want to try this.”

Clearly, Penelope is a movie with a message which Christina thinks will resonate with audiences in a beauty-obsessed era.

“She’s trapped in a house and I think people are similarly crippled by their insecurities,” says Christina.

“In spite of how she looks or how other people might view her, she’s going to go and see the world and live a life and that’s the choice you have to make yourself, too.

“I’m not going to let my insecurities keep me from having a good time.

“If you don’t lose your self consciousness, you can’t really be present in a situation. For example, if you’re at the Louvre in Paris, and thinking about how much you hate your jeans, you’re really not at the Louvre.

“It’s a really important thing for people to realise,” she adds earnestly. “You have a choice to be happy in this life. The clearest message is her self acceptance. That’s such a great place for someone to get to, where they think, ‘I really don’t hate myself and I’m really kind of okay. I deserve all the good things in life and I don’t have to look like this person or that person’. So for me this movie teaches you a lot about self acceptance and how perception is everything.”

Having been under the Hollywood spotlight since she was a child and admitting to suffering from a brief eating disorder in her teens, growing up in Tinseltown can’t have been easy. Although Christina confesses she feels more at ease with herself nowadays.

“It’s difficult, but I think I’m a lot more comfortable in my skin than I used to be and a lot less insecure,” she says. “I’m not completely there – I don’t think anybody is. But I’m a lot more accepting of the fact that I am the way I am and it might mean certain situations might arise or my personality sometimes might get in my way, but I am who I am and that’s it and I actually kind of like myself.”

Christina credits growing up with learning how to accept herself more. “It has a lot to do with getting older,” she says. “I also think it has a lot to do with being an actress as well. There’s a certain point where if you really want to be good, if you really want to play a part, there’s no room for self consciousness.

“You can see self consciousness in people’s performances. That’s what happens when you start thinking about how you look.”

Some great things to take out of this, like the 12th paragraph there. I guess this is why she's looking happier at prems and events.

[andrew r]

A short interview talking about Penelope:

Movie Q & A: Christina Ricci, Penelope

Feb 1 2008 Daily Record

Christina Ricci Penelope

Q DID you wear the pig's nose off set?

A I WOULD go in my trailer and sometimes I'd be about to walk out to the Sock Shop and then realise I had my nose on and I wasn't allowed to leave.

Q HOW did you like wearing it?

A I GOT used to it but I had this rule that I couldn't touch it or acknowledge it until four in the afternoon, or three hours before wrap. Because if I started at the beginning of the day, I would just be irritated by it all day but if I waited until then, it was only three hours of me being like, oh, get this thing off of me.

Q WHAT was the make-up process like?

A INITIALLY, they did a face cast. And then Scott, who did the prosthetic, started building and working on the noses and prosthetics and had to make them look seamless. He does that work while I'm not around and I just come to set and they do one. They just glue it on your face. I fell asleep a lot. We had a couple different noses they tested. Mark and Scott had this really hideous, awfully unattractive snout they wanted. And then there was this really cute Miss Piggy snout. All the girls were like, oh no, we should have that one. And so we ended up meeting somewhere in the middle.

Q WHAT was it like working with James McAvoy?

A JAMES is great. He's amazing. He's such a good actor and very dedicated. When you work with a really great actor, you sort of have this feeling of being like partners in crime and he certainly gave that sense of trust and being a team-mate.

Q WHAT was Reese Witherspoon like as a producer?

A SHE was there all the time. It was in the middle of the awards season, when she won her Academy Award. We were on a Vespa riding through London and she'd just won the Academy Award and everyone was just screaming at her, yelling, "that's Reese Witherspoon".

[andrew r]

From Daily News.com

Christina Ricci squeals about 'Penelope'

By BRANTLEY BARDIN

Sunday, February 17th 2008, 4:00 AM
Christina Ricci Andrzejczak/Getty

Christina Ricci

(Page 1 of 2)

When she was a teen, Christina Ricci would regularly regale journalists with outrageous proclamations about everything from sex to gunplay. But that was then.

"Now, I'm, like, 'Why on earth would you have said that?!'" the 28-year-old actress, clad in a ladylike, high-necked sea-shell print dress, her ankles demurely crossed, says. "In real life now, I'm not crazy and into 'the dark side' - I speak slowly and have a Southern kind of politeness to me."

Her onscreen life, however ... well, that remains another story entirely.

"I want people to know that if they go to see a movie I'm in that they're probably not gonna recognize me for the first three minutes," she grins. "I'm gonna do something totally weird and different from what they thought I'd do."

Hence, the actress - who has been a risk-taking iconoclast ever since she was 10 and somewhat disconcertingly played death-obsessed Wednesday Addams to perfection in 1991's "The Addams Family" and its sequel - blithely continues, "It would never occur to me to worry about putting a pig nose on and doing a movie about a pig-nosed girl."

That last comment by the 5-foot-1, saucer-eyed actress refers to her new film, "Penelope," opening Feb. 29. A comic, modern-day fairy tale about a girl who has been kept homebound by parents frightened of the world's reaction to their daughter's deformity - a sow snout brought on by a family curse - the movie is, in other words, tailor-made for Ricci.

In her 20-year-and-counting career, after all, she has worked for Ang Lee (in "The Ice Storm," she played a sexually precocious but naive teen), John Waters (in "Pecker," she was a coin-laundry operator), Tim Burton ("Sleepy Hollow," where she was the ethereal daughter of a witch) and Woody Allen ("Anything Else," as Jason Biggs' obsession-inducing girlfriend). She also scored as a troublemaking tramp who steals her brother's boyfriend in 1998's "The Opposite of Sex" and as the girlfriend of convicted serial killer Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron) in 2003's "Monster."

Then of course, two years ago, this California-born, Jersey-raised daughter of a former Ford model and psychiatrist father co-starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson in "Black Snake Moan" as a half-naked nymphomaniac chained to a minister's radiator.

"She's just chosen with a vengeance to be 'outside,' to play characters who aren't worried about being loved," smiles an approving Catherine O'Hara, who plays Ricci's overprotective mother in "Penelope." "In spite of the fact that she's an actress in movies, she's succeeded in trying not to worry what people think."

Ironically, that's precisely what the moral of "Penelope," developed and co-produced by Reese Witherspoon (who does a cameo as the first-ever friend Penelope makes upon escaping her house), is all about.

"I love the message it holds for girls," says Ricci, who admits to having battled anorexia in her teens. "It's a metaphor for escaping from the prisons we create ourselves through our insecurities and what society says we should and should not be."

Acting, she says, has helped her do just that. "For years I had a lot of feelings about the way I looked, which is why doing a movie like 'Black Snake Moan,' where I was, basically, hanging in my underwear all day, was so freeing.

"Life should be about having fun. There's no place for self-consciousness - the only person standing in your way is you."

Next up for her is the Wachowski brothers' live-action movie of the cult '60s Japanese anime "Speed Racer," where she'll play Speed's (Emile Hirsch) go-getter gal Trixie, complete with motorcycle helmet.

No problem for Ricci, who, circling back to the subject of Penelope's Miss Piggy nose, just sighs and laughs. "You know, you couldn't find a person who wants to be 'normal' more than me. But putting that pig nose on and wearing weird costumes ... well, to me that's not weird. I guess that's why I'll always be left of center."

Thant last quote I think is why I love her as an actress. Link