Interview: Christina Ricci

It’s small wonder that Christina Ricci has an uncanny ability to channel profound psychological distress, as she has done in the Ice Storm, Monster and Black Snake Moan: her psychiatrist father treated his patients at home with a variation of primal scream therapy ‘His office was in our basement, and we could hear all the screaming,’ laughs Ricci – and she has been in therapy on and off ever since she was a teenager.

So how does the intense, intelligent 27-year-old feel about portraying troubled characters such as the abused teenage Rae in Black Snake Moan?

‘She’s a damaged girl. I feel so strongly about victims of rape and incest. You see these girls that society judges as sluts, but if you’re exploited as a child, you exploit yourself as you grow up. Yet we still point fingers. I’m glad the film brought that out in the open…

‘I like to take risks. I like a challenge. Being an actress has enabled me to experience things which I’ve never dared to do in my own life…’

Read the full interview in our January 2008 issue.
email fabric.editorial@redwoodgroup.net to order your copy