Cover Story: Christina Ricci
How’s Trix?

Anime fans are already in love with Trixie, the smart, strong and stylish heroine of the Speed Racer cartoon. Now Christina Ricci introduces the bob-haired auto aficionado to a whole new audience, and in so doing makes her first summer blockbuster

It’s so easy for a young actor to be typecast. She’s the pretty one. He’s so funny. She’s the girl next door. Being able to fit neatly into a box may help pad the résumé — and the wallet — early on, but it doesn’t do those actors much good in the long run.

Christina Ricci’s never had that problem. Just 28, the Santa Monica-born actor has put together an unusually varied filmography — not that there aren’t labels for her, too.

Child actress? Check.

Indie standout? Yep.

She may not have the highest profile in Hollywood, but Ricci has had a remarkably imaginative career, ranging from critics’ favourites (Black Snake Moan, The Ice Storm, Monster) to TV appearances (Grey’s Anatomy, Ally McBeal) to award-winning short films (Little Red Riding Hood).

“You’re in a big green room, and that’s pretty much it,” Ricci says in a recent phone interview. “We’d be on these big green stages for hours, being told what is supposed to be over here, what’s going to be over there, and acting out these scenes.”

Not that she’s complaining.

“Oh my God, it was the most fun I’ve ever had,” she says. “You really just have to lose any sense of inhibition. You really rely on your imagination…. I think we all ended up relying so much on our imagination, and on Larry and Andy’s imaginations. You really are brought back to sort of this kind of, like, existing like a child all day long.”

A big-screen adaptation of Speed Racer has been in some form of development since the early ’90s. Johnny Depp and Vince Vaughn were attached at various stages, along with such directors as Gus Van Sant and Alfonso Cuarón, but those versions never got off the ground.

Finally, in 2006, the Wachowskis came on- board to write the script and direct — their first stint behind the camera since the final Matrix movie, 2003’s The Matrix Revolutions. They shot at the oldest large-scale film studio in the world, Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, (near Berlin) and got $13-million from that country’s Federal Film Fund to help finance the production — the largest chunk of government deutsch marks given to any project to date.

The story revolves around Speed Racer (Hirsch), a fearless young driver who is out to win the Crucible, a cross-country rally; expose a race-fixing plot; and avenge the death of his brother, Rex Racer (Scott Porter). Trixie, meanwhile, flies in a pink helicopter above Speed’s races and gives him advice about the course and other drivers. Ricci sees her character as a good role model for young girls — strong-willed and smart, but still supercute with a good fashion sense.

John Goodman plays Speed’s father, Susan Sarandon’s his mom and Lost star Matthew Fox is Racer X, Speed’s former rival with whom he must create an alliance. (Fans will be glad to know the Wachowskis also bought the rights to the TV show’s frenetic theme song, for which there is also a cult following.)

Funny thing is, the last time Ricci starred opposite someone who wasn’t there she was a kid — about 14 and sharing scenes with a CGI ghost in Casper. That’s about the time she made her other mainstream hits, The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, starring as morose little Wednesday Addams. But since then Ricci has mostly followed a more offbeat path.

Veering toward the unusual has gotten her a lot of work and a fair amount of notice. She earned Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award nominations for her role as a teenager who sleeps with her brother’s boyfriend in The Opposite of Sex. She also won praise for her portrayal of Selby, the girlfriend of serial killer Aileen Wuornos (a role for which Charlize Theron won an Oscar) in Monster.

But Ricci’s career has never exploded. She’s never going to be confused with, say, Angelina Jolie. On the other hand, she’s not lumped in with the Britneys and Lindsays and Parises of the world, either. Indeed, in opposition to that terrible trio, Ricci is known for her work, not her personal life.

Polite yet confident, she talks about how she has, despite her relatively high-profile work, managed to steer clear of becoming a tabloid staple. The trick: Don’t provide them with any fodder.

“I think people have a desire to give you some sort of public persona, certainly,” Ricci says. “But I think it’s also good if your persona isn’t so strong that people can’t lose who you are when they’re watching you in a film.”

So who is Ricci, then? Truly, with the exception of a few reasonably high-profile romances, like one with actor Adam Goldberg, and her admitted “flirtation” with anorexia, we know her almost exclusively from her roles, not from her love life or personal habits. Which is doubtless by design.

“I don’t have a very incendiary life,” she says. “I really don’t. I don’t go out a lot and I don’t have, like, a string of crazy relationships with movie stars. There really isn’t that much to write about me.”