'''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''.
Biography and Career
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".
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, Mount Hebron Middle School and Montclair High School where she graduated from in 1998. 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, finally separated in 1993, she stayed with her mom who took custody of the kids.
Early roles
A critic for the Bergen Record discovered Ricci at age eight in a school play (''The Twelve Days of Christmas'') at Glenfield Middle School, 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, Christina's popularity increased dramatically, and she became in high demand by
