Christina Ricci is on the cover of the latest issue of Hollywood Life magazine, and she looks absolutely stunning. Christina admitted to struggling with anorexia for many years, but it looks like she’s really gotten a handle on it. Her body looks much healthier than in recent months, and she’s absolutely stunning in the photographs.
Christina’s often been criticized for her somewhat unusual looks. She’s definitely sported some odd hairstyles and unconventional clothing in her time, but with the right hair and makeup she’s clearly gorgeous. Here are the pictures from the Spring issue of Hollywood Life.
Christina Ricci was on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night to promote Speed Racer and it was a fun interview. Yesterday I said that she seemed nervous on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Tuesday night and a lot of you pointed out that she seemed fine and that she’s one of your favorite actresses. Commenter Bros mentioned something that I didn’t consider - Jay Leno isn’t a great interviewer and wasn’t doing his job if she wasn’t at ease. It wasn’t noticeable to everyone anyway.
I definitely have a more positive opinion of her after seeing her recent interviews. She’s fun, upbeat and seems like a genuine person.
On how her brother stabbed her as a child when he wanted to change the channel
Christina told Jimmy Kimmel a funny story about how her brother accidentally stabbed her as a child when they were fighting over their makeshift remote control:
“It was 1984, we had a TV with a button missing and somebody had decided to use a a fondue skewer to change the channel, and my oldest brother Rafeal was in charge… I grabbed the fondue skewer from him to change the channel and he grabbed it back from me, stabbed me in the chest and then changed the channel. And then he kind of realized what he had done and looked at me and at this point I had two little pools of blood forming on my sleeper suit. After that I had two little holes on my chest for like a couple months.”
Kimmel quipped “A relic from the 70s to change a TV from the 80s, winds up in your heart practically.”
Christina’s brother issues statement about fondue skewer stabbing incident over Smurfs episode
The best part was the written statement issued by Christina’s brother about the incident, which was practically an entire page long.
“In order to watch the Smurfs, my brother and sister would send Christina, who was four, to run to the TV and push the button… There was very little damage. The bleeding stopped very quickly. I fully understand that her recollection differed from mine and I humbly submit mine here in the spirit of reconciliation and familial peace making.”
Ricci seemed genuinely surprised that her brother wrote the letter and said “A family of smart asses.”
Then they talked about Ricci’s Speed Racer character and her haircut, and Kimmel said “Did you know that… the woman who did the voice of Trixie in the cartoon was also Snuggles the fabric softener bear? Google it if you want to.”
On being a clean freak
Kimmel said he heard Ricci was a clean freak and she said “I am, I had to cut down my housekeeper from three times a week to once a week.” She said she wants to get a roomba to clean up after her dogs and that she’s getting one delivered overnight. She said she realized how much her dogs shed.
Kimmel said “Don’t expect miracles from the Roomba.” He also recommended that she shave her dogs.
On dressing her dogs as little thugs and not buying them clothing herself
Kimmel showed photos of Ricci’s dogs. One was in a little hoodie and she said “That’s Ramone Aule (sp) he likes wear his hoodie and intimidate the neighbors… that one was a gift, I refuse to buy them [clothes]”
Kimmel showed another cute photo of one of her dogs in a white waffle-knit sweater and she said “that’s a pair of socks and a leg warmer I cut up.”
One dog was wearing what looked like a little shirt with lipstick on the collar and the dog looked pissed and Ricci said “he looks like a dorky surburban dad who went to Vegas and bought that shirt and the kids are making fun of him… it’s hilarious.” Kimmel said that there was a hooker involved. He is definitely better at interviews than Leno.
Christina Ricci is shown on 5/3/06 at the Speed Racer premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, thanks to PRPhotos.
An awkward interview
Christina Ricci was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote Speed Racer last night and she was visibly nervous and kind of blathering on at some points. Toward the end of the interview she warmed up when she was talking about her physical preparation for the role, but you can tell she’s not used to doing talk shows and that it was difficult for her. The interview was very awkward and I felt kind of sorry for her watching it.
On being scared of a bobcat in her neighborhood
She met a cougar that was on earlier with an animal handler and said she didn’t pet him when Jay asked about it because “that cougar could eat me.” She sounded kind of ditsy about it, and also said there’s a bobcat in her neighborhood and that she runs into the house from her car because “they eat people.”
On her press tour for “Speed Racer”
Ricci said it was her first worldwide film tour, and that she rode on a private jet for the first time along with the cast of the film. When Jay asked her if she’d done that kind of press junket before she said “I did big movies when I was a kid, but I never went on a private jet before.”
She said she won $70 playing blackjack on the jet and beat everyone.
On being a neat freak and cleaning other people’s houses
She said she has a packing list for when she travels and has to make sure she has all the items listed out ahead of time. As for dating men who are slobs, she says “I like when you don’t have to sanitize yourself after you go over to a man’s house. Some boys don’t really value clean [sic]”
Leno asked her if she was at someone’s house and their kitchen is messy would she clean it, and she said “I will and if I don’t really know the person I’ll kind of say ‘I’m not trying to be pushy or controlling or anything, but would you mind if I took that into the kitchen did did your dishes?’”
On her closet, with shoes organized by designer
“I have one room that’s all shoes and bags… it’s a small room.”
Jay asked her how many pairs of shoes she had, and she said less than 100, and less than 90 when Jay asked about that, but he didn’t really narrow it down to exactly how many pairs. She said “they’re all organized by maker… like the Manolos are in one place.”
She said she has a built-in ladder in her closet, but that it’s not her dream closet, and she made a reference to the moving closet in the 1987 movie “Overboard” with Goldie Hawn that was completely lost on the audience and she kind of went on about it.
On doing her own stunts for “Speed Racer”
Ricci said she learned karate, did a lot of cartwheeling and learned how to pick up a gun mid-cartwheel “which was the best moment of my life.”
Jay asked her to do a cartwheel and she said she would if she wasn’t wearing a short skirt. She bragged that she can do one arm pullups and pushups, “and that’s pretty impressive.”
Ricci didn’t give the impression of an experienced movie star or even someone that’s comfortable being famous. She seems more like an average person who happens to act and finds the whole press process new and a little intimidating. I was surprised and came away with a much different opinion of her, like she’s not a fake person at all.
The NY Post notes today that Ricci left the Costume Institute Gala celebration right after she learned that Anna Wintour neglected to seat her next to her boyfriend, Kick Gurry. It’s possible she also felt intimated being in a room full of people she barely knew. It’s a shame because her dress was amazing.
Thanks to WENN for this photo of Ricci at The Costume Institute Gala.
The stars of the film Speed Racer were out for the premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in NY on Saturday night. Christina Ricci looked incredible in a one-shoulder black dress. I like the way she’s grown out her helmet hair or has added extensions, it’s hard to tell, and is now wearing it in loose waves. She did a silly pose and showed off her line-drawn lion tattoo on her shoulder. When you’re a celebrity it seems like you should be more judicious about getting tattoos since you rely on your body for work, but they’re so easily covered up it doesn’t matter. Tattoos are for you not other people.
Ricci explained that the lion is Aslan from “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” and explained that “It’s a symbol of my hellish childhood. I struggled through my oppressive teenage years and when I turned 18 I escaped. Like Aslan I was finally free.”
Ricci has plenty of other tattoos, including a bird on her left breast, praying hands on her lower stomach, the words “Move or Bleed” in script on her ribs, the name “Jack” on her thigh for her dead dog, and I could go on. I had a friend in college who loved tattoos and would get one whenever she had a momentous event or a hard time in her life, and it sounds like Ricci does that too.
Ricci’s costar Susan Saradon owes up to a couple of tattoos, including having her children’s initials on her back. She says that it hurt like a bitch, basically:
“I got my kids’ initials tattooed on my back,” Susan Sarandon, the 61-year-old Hollywood actress, disclosed at the premiere of Speed Racer, at the Empire, Leicester Square.
“It really hurt. It hurt so much more than I thought it would.”
“I got another tattoo on my wrist afterwards,” added the Oscar-winning star of Dead Man Walking.
“But I’m going to save the next one until I’m 70 or 80.”
And as for other needles, 61 year-old Sarandon says she’s not getting Botox either, and not just because it pricks. She says it makes you look like you’re wearing a mask and that she wants to get parts for her age group:
You can see I haven’t had Botox [or] these things would be gone,” she said, pointing to her frown lines. “I can’t afford to have my face not moving…”
In a few years, “I’ll have an advantage of being the only one who looks 60,” she said with a laugh. “Everyone else looks so much younger. [I’ll] probably get all those parts!”
Sarandon doesn’t take hormone replacement therapy and relies on antioxidants, dermabrasion and exercise like Pilates to help maintain her beauty. She really is an example of how to age gracefully in Hollywood.
Sarandon has two three children, Eva Amurri, 23, with her ex, Italian director Franco Amurri, and Miles, 16, and Jack, 19, with longterm love Tim Robbins. She had Miles when she was 45 and he might help keep her young too. Or at least on her toes.
Speed Racer is in theaters in the US on May 9th, and is out around the world in most countries around that time or in early June. It’s getting mixed reviews and is said to be campy and visually appealing with a less than satisfying plot.
Christina Ricci has an opinion on Lindsay Lohan – don’t we all? – but for once it has to do with her acting roles and not her private life. Ricci says that Lohan somehow glamorized stripper roles in films, and that’s stupid.
Ricci claims stars like Lohan, who peeled off in 2007 movie I Know Who Killed Me, have created a culture of women who find flattery in misogyny.
She says, “It used to be something that we (women) were sort of ashamed of. You didn’t want to admit to people that you were a stripper.
“But now, the hottest thing to say is, ‘I can work a pole!’ Who gives a f**k? But it’s a huge weird thing.
“I mean, you see actresses, and their passion project is to play a stripper. It’s just stupid.”
A few years ago women were changing their attractive appearances to win Oscars. Remember Nicole Kidman’s nose in ‘The Hours’, Charlize Theron in ‘Monster’? Christina Ricci is currently doing it in ‘Penelope’ by wearing a pig’s nose on her otherwise flawless face.
There’s a little article this week in the Sydney Morning Herald about the volume of men now going full frontal in film, and how women don’t seem to react in quite the same way as men.
The 28-year-old comedian (Jason Segal, in Forgetting Sarah Marshall)is presented in full-frontal glory during a break-up scene that involves Segel naked, dripping wet and sobbing like a baby. No clever Austin Powers-style genital obfuscation with props. No artful lighting to preserve any mystery. And the camera cuts away from close-ups of his teary face (he’s being dumped by his girlfriend, the titular Sarah, played by Kristen Bell) to wider, phallus-inclusive shots three times.
At the South by Southwest festival, Segel almost brought the house down with laughter every time he was shown au naturel.
Segel wrote the film’s script, basing the scene on a real-life naked break-up of his own. The actor-writer contemplated inequalities between male and female film nudity before putting himself on display.
“When a woman does nudity in a movie, men immediately switch into a sexual mode,” he says. “For women, from what I understand, it’s not like that. They see a naked, out-of-shape man crying and it’s funny - something weird, disturbing and disgusting we can all laugh at.”
Maybe it is the increase in male nudity that is encouraging women to do more confronting nude scenes as strippers. Or maybe it’s just a result of the pole dancing work out craze, why bother to develop a skill if you can’t use it at work?
I tried the whole pole dance work out phenomenon. You really have to be very coordinated not to injure yourself. I think I gained 5 pounds waiting for my arms to stop hurting.
Picture note by Celebitchy: Christina Ricci and the cast of “Speedracer” are shown at the Grand Prix on 4/19/08, thanks to PRPhotos. Susan Sarandon looks great! Also shown are Matthew Fox, Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, and racers Gerardo Bonila and Ben Devlin.
Reese Witherspoon, Christina Ricci, James McAvoy and Amanda Bynes were among the stars at last night’s premiere of Penelope, a modern romantic fairy tale about a girl born with the nose of a pig. Christina Ricci stars as Penelope, with Witherspoon as her rough ‘n tumble sidekick friend. Witherspoon also produced the film. James McAvoy is the love interest who is able to look past the physical imperfections to the girl underneath. The film is getting mixed reviews, with some saying that it’s not cohesive. Many other reviewers call it charming and quirky.
Some commentors on Oh No They Didn’t note that the film has been out for some time, as it premiered at film festivals including Toronto in 2006 and Cannes in 2007. That doesn’t mean that it won’t be a commercial success, though, as it seems to be the type of cute film that movie-goers enjoy. I had high hopes for a box office success for Sweeney Todd over the holidays, but it only took in $52 million domestically. That’s nothing to scoff at, but it isn’t that high either, and the film may have suffered from its dark subject matter as well as the fact that it was a musical. Penelope seems to have broader appeal, and we’ll have to see how it does at the box office.
Penelope is out in US theaters on January 29.
It’s cute how Reese and Christina both have the same hairstyle with bangs and pulled back hair. Reese’s outfit is looking a little too casual for a premiere but maybe she didn’t want to upstage Christina Ricci. Rachel Taylor is also shown, and she’s wearing a very odd sack-like dress. Thanks to PRPhotos for these pictures.
Remember how everyone was getting those terrible helmet bangs about a year and a half ago and how Janet Jackson popularized it? My hairdresser had a big poster up from Jose Eber featuring that style, and when I asked him about it he just shook his head and said he hoped it would pass.
The severe bangs were flipped to the side until they slowly grew out to make way for more classic hair trends, but now they’re back again in all their forehead-blocking glory. I blame Katie Holmes for bringing back this questionable style. She manages to pull off a severe interpretation of her daughter’s bowl cut, but only because she has either naturally thin straight hair or enough volume has been taken out of her hair to make it flat and sleek. In my opinion this style just doesn’t work with thicker hair and looks silly.
Here are some celebrities who work it, and others who just should flip it to the side and wait for the trend to pass. Rather than group them according to my opinion, I’ll just post the photos and let you discuss. I don’t think this style works with hair that isn’t straight and thin, but you may disagree.
It’s just hair. It will grow out eventually and can be styled to compensate, but unlike a bad outfit you can’t just switch it for something else the next day without some effort.
Shown are Katie Holmes, Heidi Klum, Kate Hudson, Christina Ricci, Elle Macpherson, Selma Blair, Kylie Minogue, Kelis, Paula Abdul in a messy interpretation of the style, Rihanna, Myleene Klass, and Janet Jackson.
Reese Witherspoon is a marketing genius. She knows exactly how much to say in an interview without giving much away. Reese says “Yeah, my divorce was devastating, but I’m not going to talk about it” and you’ve got your headline, baby. “Reese says divorce was devastating’. Ta da. And the conversation goes back to whatever project the actress is currently promoting.
Reese is currently out promoting Penelope, her latest flick from her production company Type A, in which Christina Ricci plays a woman with a pig’s nose. I’m not giving away any more of the plot, because I am dying to see this (I love Reese) and don’t want to spoil it.
Reese spoke to E! News telling them she wants to shoot someone. That’s headline-worthy right there.
Here’s what she said about shoot-’em-up movies wherein the leading man gets to take down the bad guy. “Why does the guy get to shoot him? I want the girl to shoot him!” she said, laughing intermittently. “I love watching Angelina Jolie kick ass in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and I can’t wait to see her in Wanted. I would love to shoot someone. In the knee cap or something, just to stop them!”
I would really like to see Elle Woods (Reese’s character from Legally Blonde) go crazy and shoot people. Elle, in a movie with Jason Bourne, where they go around shooting all her ex-boyfriends and members of her sorority. That is an instant movie classic.
Then, Reese told Good Morning America that she wants her kids to get bullied so they’ll have the experience:
“I’ve had movies that were stinkeroos! And then, you know, I think everybody has experience of a being awkward. I was always really short and really underdeveloped and had big coke-bottle glasses … I think, that’s where I got a personality from, though, man. I wouldn’t give any of it back — not for a day.”
Penelope has grown up not only dealing with the shame of her parents, but also with the ridicule of her classmates. Witherspoon sees this taunting as “formative” and says her own experience with failure has helped define who she is.
“I wouldn’t want my children to miss out on any of that teasing and bullying and don’t you think it kind of makes you who you are?” Witherspoon asked Connelly.
“This drives me crazy about today. Everyone wins the award and then, you know, everybody’s an MVP? No! They’re not! Okay? I distinctly recall the two weeks of crying because I didn’t make the softball team. It made me interesting, you know?”
Gee, why don’t you just put a couple of ‘kick me’ signs on their backs as you drop them off to school Reese? You don’t think they’re going to get picked on? All kids get picked on, and famous kids probably more so. Reese was actually talking about this in the context of her new movie, where the title character has a pig’s nose and I suspect would get some teasing. And when I say ’some teasing’ I mean ‘relentless teasing’.
Then, she talks about paparazzi and her fear of a butt shot.
The mother-of-two admits the prospect of her bikini-clad bottom gracing the pages of tabloid magazines and internet sites around the world terrifies her.
Witherspoon says, “I hate that the paparazzi takes my picture when I’m on vacation: `Oh my god, did they see my butt? I hope they did not see my butt.’”
Which I totally sympathize with, because even the most bootylicious are afraid to see a photograph of their asses on the cover of a weekly rag.
Now this is all very cute and entertaining of Reese, and makes for good press, but what was the pink elephant in the room she was avoiding talking about? One was the death of Heath Ledger and her (unconfirmed) boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal’s reaction to it. The other was her husband’s latest interview about the divorce and the other woman Abbie Cornish.
Way to go Reese. Penelope is in cinemas February 28th.
Note by Celebitchy: Here’s the trailer for Penelope, it looks so cute!
And here are some stills from the film, thanks to AllMoviePhoto. Also shown are Christina Ricci, James McAvoy and Peter Dinklage. The last three pictures were taken in May, 2006 during filming. Spoiler Alert: The final picture below shows Ricci with her full face for the film, so don’t look at that image if you would rather not spoil it before you see the film.
I really don’t think we have enough animal stories here at Celebitchy. And we definitely don’t have enough “when animals attack” type stories. Now to be fair, we’re a celebrity site. And animals don’t attack celebrities nearly as much as they ought to. So it leaves us searching. But once in a while the stars align just right and a monkey grabs an actress’s left boob. Okay by once in a while I mean once ever. But it’s pretty funny nonetheless. It seems that actress Christina Ricci has a longstanding fear of monkeys. Though to be fair, most people are hideously afraid of monkeys. They’re like spiders and snakes. Wait, that’s backwards. Monkeys are freaking adorable. I wouldn’t want one living in my bathroom or anything, but a monkey as a concept is pretty appealing to me. But Christina Ricci and I don’t share this opinion. It’s one of the many things we’re always fighting about. On the first day of filming for her new movie “Penelope,” Christina got attacked by a monkey. A pervert boob-grabbing monkey.
“I’m afraid of monkeys but I had decided not to be afraid of this monkey because no one else is: ‘Everyone else thinks he’s awesome so just be cool.’ It’s the first day of shooting and I have this kitchen scene where I’m sitting down and the monkey is sitting right next to me. Of course it freaks out during the take and grabs my left breast and will not let go, and he’s so strong. I’m thinking, ‘This thing is gonna rip it’s hand away and I will no longer have a boob there!’
“I’m so freaked out and the whole rest of the actors are turned around so no one sees that this has happened to me and I’m like, ‘Help, help’ as quietly and calmly as possible so this thing does not freak out any further.
“Finally they got him off me but my fear is completely validated and I did not go near him for the rest of the shoot… Monkeys are crazy and you never what they’ll grab onto; I don’t like unpredictable animals.”
Something tells me Chim Chim the monkey doesn’t like you much either, or he wouldn’t have been trying to rip your boob off. In the animal kingdom, boob grabbery is considered the greatest of insults. It’s like giving the finger, except it hurts a lot more. Clearly Chim Chim thought Christina’s face was kina odd looking. But being the gentleman that he is, instead of scratching her eyes out he went for the boob. That’s one classy monkey.
Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Christina Ricci at the Palazzo Las Vegas Grand Opening on January 17th. No specific photos were available, but her left boob appears to be in good working order. Images thanks to PR Photos.
I was always under the impression that gambling was a bad thing. You know, it’s like gambling is step one, prostitutes step two, and the next thing you know you’re laying in the gutter with a needle in your arm, a whore in your pants, and a bunch of dollar bills shoved in your mouth. Or some such thing. But apparently gambling is cool after all, because Christina Ricci is promoting it. I didn’t know celebrities promoted generic vices, I thought it was only specific brands for which they were paid. She’s not talking about poker or some other form of card-based gambling, but going for the old fashioned ponies.
“I’ve learned to love gambling,” Christina Ricci told PEOPLE at the grand opening party for the Palazzo Las Vegas. “I was in Australia for a few months and gambling is like a national pastime there, so I learned to love betting on horses, and now I even put in a few football bets and I’m kind of obsessed and into it. Gambling is pretty good.”
Thursday night, blackjack was her game of choice. When she wasn’t sitting on her boyfriend’s lap, Ricci was doubling down and splitting aces with Angie Harmon, her hubby Jason Seyhorn and Jerry O’ Connell.
Ricci, 27, seemed to find a way to win at Palazzo’s blackjack tables. Horse racing was another matter. “I have no strategy (with horses) and I never pick winners,” she says. “But it’s still fun.”
I love how Christina says she “learned” to love gambling. Like how your mom made you “learn” to love spinach. Because it’s so good for you, so you better acquire a taste for it, damn it! And if you don’t learn to bet on the horses, you’re not getting any dessert for a week. Seriously, is so little going on in Christina’s life that she has to tell us about her new love of various vices? Is so little going on in my life that I have to write about it? Yes and yes apparently. I’ll see you at the track.
Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Christina at the Palazzo Las Vegas Grand Opening on Thursday night. Images thanks to PR Photos.
