Started acting young and had a movie franchise.

This actress reached A/A- list.

Started acting young and had a movie franchise.

She also was given the lead on at least one failed television show.

She says her dad used to force her to sleep with him until she was about 14.

Christina Ricci

The Addams Family, Pan Am

Christina Ricci: ‘I don’t think anything I said was really dark’

It never felt like work, Ricci says. It turned out she had a disposition exactly suited to hanging out on set with people much older than her, taking instruction. “I’ve always loved this. I always knew that I was kind of bored; the regular life of a child didn’t fit me. I wanted to work. I wanted to be utilised. I was always a really great set kid; I always wanted to be a member of the group. I wanted to do my best.”

It’s an odd thing to say: “I wanted to be utilised.” Wasn’t she intimidated by the adults around her?

“No. I would just think, this is a great opportunity for me to watch and learn.”

The thing you wonder about former child stars is what it was like for them to choose, or to have chosen for them, a career before they were capable of making such a choice. “Right,” snaps Ricci, dispensing the second death stare, “but I hadn’t chosen a career. It was always something that me and my family had said I would keep doing until I didn’t think it was fun any more. And then when I was about 14 I was like, no, I think I want to carry on doing this for the rest of my life.”

That was the age at which she decided to send herself to therapy. (Why? “Me and my sister have always been very curious and read a lot about women’s issues.”) Ricci’s father is a psychiatrist who promoted primal scream therapy, treating patients in the family basement in New Jersey, so that screams would issue up into the kitchen, where they went largely ignored by the rest of the family. It’s almost too good a detail, given Ricci’s early gothic performances. In the past, she has described her father as a difficult, unbending man, sensitive to the point of paranoia, with whom she confirms she is no longer in touch. Her parents are divorced. She will not speak publicly about her father now. It is her mother and her elder sister whom she credits with saving her from spiralling out of control in that brief period when she first got access to her earnings. “I thought it was hysterical when I finally came into money. I thought it was hilarious that I had money, which is, I suppose, not the kind of attitude you should have. I couldn’t really take it seriously. So I made all the mistakes that people make. I had a ridiculous car. I bought way too many clothes.” – Source