Christina Ricci Was Never Trying to Be Like Everyone Else

From our couches, we’re at the moment getting a front-row seat to one thing great—and lengthy overdue—on our screens. It’s the privilege of watching iconic actresses over a sure age sink their tooth into juicy, nuanced roles and ship a few of their strongest performances up to now. Christina Ricci, who’s one in all them, is thrilled.

“Once I was youthful, there was an concept of what a film star must be,” she says. “I by no means needed to play a number one girl. The entire concept of being an ingenue had a powerless connotation to it. I needed to play dynamic characters that had company, have been proactive, and higher mirrored the individuals I noticed in actual life.”

Ricci was typically discouraged from taking part in some of these roles—not that it stopped her. She transitioned from youngster star of the ’90s to indie darling within the 2000s, and whereas it wasn’t a straightforward street, it resulted in a physique of labor that, very like the characters she’s so drawn to, is unconventional and artistically adventurous.

“I used to be hopeful that as I received older, I might be thought-about for extra,” she says, and that persistence and persistence paid off. Now, within the newest act of her profession, she’s on two hit collection and audiences are delighting in watching her embody the unusual and multifaceted personalities she performs so effectively. “The world has modified just a little bit: There’s much more worth in individuals being people.”

This shift has helped Ricci really feel safer not solely in her uniqueness as an artist, however in herself exterior the work. Regardless of the unaffected cool-girl persona many followers might affiliate her with, she says that at 43 she’s solely lately began to really feel actually comfy in her personal pores and skin. Rising up within the public eye meant her bodily look was continually being scrutinized. “I bear in mind being younger and so insecure and obsessive about my physique,” she says. “As you become old, I believe individuals begin to worth various things about you—your abilities, what you’re contributing. That means that you can admire these issues as effectively.”

Wanting again, Ricci says, lots of the issues she as soon as felt self-conscious about appear pointless now. She tells youthful co-stars to lean into what makes them totally different and irreplaceable (not that she thinks they actually need her recommendation). “I inform them: ‘You might be precisely who you’re meant to be. On the finish of the day, it’s your experiences that you just’ll bear in mind.’”

A turning level on her journey to self-confidence was turning into a mother. “I used to be capable of see my physique as one thing greater than an object to be checked out by different individuals,” she says. “It was able to making such loopy modifications, after which returning again to itself—I felt I may belief it to do what it must do.”

She’s additionally discovered confidence in self-care rituals. She likes to take day by day baths (“the very first thing I do within the morning”), and she or he shares her toilet with moisturizing physique oils and lotions and scrubs that make her pores and skin really feel tender. “I’ve all the time been somebody who’s carried out a whole lot of upkeep work,” she provides. “I care for my pores and skin and make the time to make sure that it’s wholesome and nourished.”

She additionally retains her pores and skin clean by getting common waxes at European Wax Center. “I’ve been waxing since I used to be 20 years previous,” she says. “I like that it doesn’t matter what I have to placed on for a shoot, I don’t have to fret—I’m assured.”