Erin McWhirter
June 12, 2008 12:00am
CHRISTINA Ricci has had her share of Hollywood demons, including anorexia, but she's currently enjoying life with an Aussie boyfriend, and a hit new action film.
As Hollywood hot property Christina Ricci reflects on spending Christmas and New Year's Eve with her Aussie boyfriend Kick Gurry in Australia, she breaks into a wide smile.
At first, the petite star seems somewhat guarded, but later shows a softer side, dishing out a small glimmer of her down-to-earth personality and possibly the very reason her Speed Racer co-star Gurry fell for her.
Spending the summer in Australia was blissful for the pair, who met on the live-action remake of the 1960s Japanese cartoon last year, spending the festive season soaking up the rays in Sydney.
The visit even left Ricci, 28, contemplating moving to Australia one day, no doubt moving into Gurry's lavish Darling Point home, right next door to Oscar winner Nicole Kidman and her country crooning husband, Keith Urban.
Though The Addams Family, Mermaids and Monster star kept a lid on her relationship, it appears her new beau's Aussie spirit has rubbed off on the actor.
‘‘For me, I have definitely grown out of thinking jaded is cool. I used to have a real problem with sincerity, I was always sarcastic, but I think now I am confident enough within myself to be sincere,'' she admits.
Ricci has come a long way from the extremes of her troubled youth, when she battled anorexia to emerge as the confident woman she is today.
‘‘What's funny to me is when people say, ‘Don't you feel Hollywood has made it hard for you?', but the thing is my real life has made things hard for me,'' Ricci reveals.
‘‘Making movies was like my refuge. It was so much fun. Just being a real person and having growing pains, that was tough, not acting.''
The new grown-up Ricci may not have realised she was a role model early on, but she does now and she loves it. One movie in particular, the fantasy love story Penelope, was the film that showcased that feeling.
Even though the film went straight to DVD in Australia after bad box-office sales around the world, Ricci gives it credit for raising self-esteem issues and exploring them.
In the film Ricci's character, Penelope, is protected from the public when she's born with a pig's nose. The only way to break the spell is for Penelope to fall in love. However, it isn't the love of someone else but the love of herself that will rid her of the nose that has caused her grief for decades.
‘‘I think a lot of us have insecurities that we blow so far out of proportion and we get so dramatic about it that we might as well be a third-degree burns victim,'' she says.
In her latest big-screen outing alongside John Goodman, Susan Sarandon and Matthew Fox, Ricci portrays Trixie, a girl who is madly in love with Speed Racer (played by Emile Hirsch), but also has the need for speed.
‘‘The thing I love about Trixie is that she is Speed's girlfriend, so she has planned things with him and schemes with him, so she is really smart. But besides that, she drives a helicopter and watches the road for him. She does everything. I loved it so much that now I want to do some more action. I want to play a spy and some sort of FBI agent, but I really, really, really want to do another action film.'' - STORY FROM
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