Christina Ricci Feels Bad That She Used To Be A ‘Bit Of A D*ckhead’ During Interviews As A Teen

Christina Ricci is in the midst of a well-deserved resurgence. She’s got a hit show, the about-to-return Yellowjackets, and thanks to Wednesday, there’s renewed attention for her work in the two ‘90s Addams Family movies. Speaking of, when Ricci was younger, she earned a reputation for frank interviews in which she freely spoke her mind. Sometimes she spoke about issues like mental health, body image, and depression. Sometimes she was kind of combative. She doesn’t do that anymore, and in a new honest but not holds barred chat with Rolling Stone (in a bit caught by The AV Club), she admitted she could be, you know, kind of a teenager.

“I was a bit of a dickhead,” Ricci said. “I could have handled it in a way that was less teenage.”

Not that she was entirely at fault. The late ‘90s/early aughts, when Ricci was celebrated as a kind of “anti-It girl,” were a time when young women were more sexualized than they are now. Ricci got caught up in that. For instance, a 1999 cover story for — as it happens — Rolling Stone featured an older white guy writing sentences that described her as a “hazardously sexy teen who will say anything.” The main photo, meanwhile, finds her posing in pink lingerie.

“It’s not how I would have chosen to be dressed, but it’s very much of its time,” Ricci says of it now. “Not great.”

These days, she’s far more protective of herself, though she worries she could let her guard down. Doing TV is different from doing movies in many ways, and one example is that with movies you do press once, maybe twice. With TV you’re constantly having to do press. That means more opportunities to let something slip out.

“I find myself starting to feel a little bit more devil-may-care about the things I say,” Ricci said. “And that’s not good for me. I always go too far. I never realize how awful a thing I’m saying is until someone else is like, ‘What the f*ck’”