50 facts about Christina Ricci: stated that she feels that at 5 ft 1 in she is "too short" to ever be an A-list actress

Ricci's big screen debut was in 1990's Mermaids as Cher's character's younger daughter. Learn 50 facts about actress Christina Ricci.

1. Christina Ricci began her acting career appearing in commercials and received early recognition as a child star.

2. Her debut performance in Mermaids (1990) was followed by a breakthrough role as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993) when she was eleven and thirteen years old, respectively.

3. Following her success with the Addams Family films, she earned somewhat of a "teen icon" status thanks to appearances in various big budget productions, notably Now and Then (1995) and Casper (1995), which were marketed for younger audiences before making a successful transition into adult-oriented roles with the art house drama The Ice Storm (1997) at the age of seventeen.

4. Ricci continued acting in small-scale independent films such as Buffalo '66 (1998) and The Opposite of Sex (1998), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress).

5. She made a departure from independent cinema with Tim Burton's big-budget Gothic horror Sleepy Hollow (1999) and later received praise for her performance in the drama Monster (2003), portraying the girlfriend of a notorious female serial killer.

6. Ricci has also acted in various television productions.

7. In 2006, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for her role as a paramedic in the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy.

8. In 2011-12, she starred in the short-lived television series Pan Am as stewardess Maggie Ryan.

9. In 2014, she starred in the Lifetime production Lizzie Borden Took an Ax as the titular role, marking a return to the darker roles she had generated attention for earlier in her career.

10. In 2015, she reprised the role in the limited series The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, chronicling the aftermath of the events that took place in the biopic.

11. Ricci married dolly grip James Heerdegen in October 2013.

12. Gave birth to a son in August 2014.

13. She is also the national spokesperson for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN).

14. Ricci was born in Santa Monica, California.

15. She is the fourth and youngest child of Sarah (Murdoch), a real estate agent, and Ralph Ricci, a lawyer and a group therapist.

16. Regarding her ancestry, Ricci has stated, "The Italian blood has been bred out of me. There's an Italian four or five generations back who married an Irish woman and they had all sons. So they married more Irish women, there were more sons, and more Irish women. Now I'm basically Scots-Irish."

17. The family moved to Montclair, New Jersey, where she grew up attending Edgemont Elementary School, Glenfield Middle School, and Montclair High School, as well as the Morristown-Beard School.

18. After one year, she left the high school for the Professional Children's School in New York City.

19. Her siblings are Rafael, Dante, and Pia.

20. Ricci's parents separated in 1993, when she was 13, and she has not spoken to her father since.

21. A critic for the Bergen Record discovered Ricci at age eight in a school play (The Twelve Days of Christmas) at Edgemont School in Montclair, New Jersey. Another child 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.

22. Ricci's big screen debut was in 1990's Mermaids as Cher's character's younger daughter.

23. She also appears in the music video of the film's soundtrack "The Shoop Shoop Song".

24. She starred as the morbidly precocious Wednesday Addams in the feature film adaptation of The Addams Family. She reprised the role for the film's 1993 sequel, Addams Family Values. Both films were commercially successful, and critics singled out Ricci's performance as being one of the highlights of the first film and its sequel.

25. Her next project, the live-action adaptation of Casper, was her first in a lead role. The feature received mixed critical reviews, but it was a success at the box office, being the year's eighth highest grossing film. Ricci played the younger version of Rosie O'Donnell.

26. Now and Then was another box office success, and received favorable comparisons to Stand by Me, being called "the female version" of the film.

27. She also starred in a handful of other films with teenage roles such as Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain and That Darn Cat.

28. In 1997, Ricci began to appear in more adult roles, beginning with her role as the troubled, sexually curious Wendy Hood in Ang Lee's critically acclaimed The Ice Storm.

29. Ricci dated actor and director Adam Goldberg in 2005.

30. She began dating actor Owen Benjamin in 2008 after they met on the set of their film All's Faire in Love.

31. They became engaged in March 2009, but ended the engagement in June 2009.

32. In February 2013, Ricci announced her engagement to dolly grip James Heerdegen, whom she met while working on Pan Am in 2012.

33. They married on October 26, 2013 in Manhattan.

34. After making the top of PETA's worst-dressed list and receiving a letter from the animal rights group, Ricci decided to give up wearing fur.

35. Ricci and artist Jessicka Addams are listed in several art publications as Los Angeles artist Mark Ryden's muses. Ricci's image has appeared in over 10 of his oil paintings and numerous sketches.

36. For her performance as Dede, Ricci won acclaim and was nominated for a Golden Globe. Although she missed out on an Academy Award nomination, Entertainment Weekly honored her well-received performance as one of the "Worst Oscar Snubs Ever".

37. She then starred opposite Charlize Theron in the film Monster; during Theron's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, she acknowledged Ricci, calling her the "unsung hero" of the film.

38. Ricci made a cameo appearance on Beck's successful album Guero, providing vocals on "Hell Yes".

39. On December 4, 1999, she appeared as the guest host on Saturday Night Live. She performed parodies of Britney Spears and the Olsen twins.

40. In February 2006, Ricci made a guest appearance as a paramedic in the ABC drama Grey's Anatomy, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award.

41. She was a guest star for seven episodes in the last season of Ally McBeal in 2002 as Debbie 'Liza' Bump, a lawyer who works at Cage & Fish and marries Richard Fish in the last episode.

42. In 2006, Ricci stated that she feels that at 5 ft 1 in (155 cm) she is "too short" to ever be an A-list actress, saying she tends "to look really small on camera".

43. She has also said that she believes that she does not have much control over her career, specifying that she still has to audition for film parts.

44. In 2006, Ricci starred in Penelope, a modern fairytale.

45. In 2008 she played the female lead in the Wachowskis' feature film adaptation of Speed Racer.

46. She also signed on for three episodes of TNT's crime drama Saving Grace during its second season. Ricci played a young detective who temporarily partners with Grace, played by Holly Hunter.

47. Ricci appeared with Liam Neeson and Justin Long in the psychological thriller After.

48. She made her Broadway debut as Mandy in Time Stands Still, resuming performances on September 23, 2010 at the Cort Theatre, alongside original cast members Laura Linney, Brian d'Arcy James and Eric Bogosian. She replaced Alicia Silverstone, who played the role of Mandy in its Manhattan Theater Club engagement.

49. She returned to the stage in April 2012, playing Hermia in an off-Broadway revival of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

50. Ricci has tattoos of a lion on her right shoulder blade (a reference to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a favorite novel of hers as a youngster), an Edward Gorey figure on the inside of her right wrist, praying hands on her left hip (this tattoo was originally a bat), the name "Jack" on her right thigh for a dead pet, a sparrow on her right breast, and a mermaid on her left ankle. She also had the words "Move or Bleed" on the left side of her ribcage as well as a bouquet of sweet pea on her lower back.

Source: Wikipedia.org