Christina Ricci in The Man Who Cried

At the tender age of twenty-one, Christina Ricci has appeared in 31 feature films. She’s made the transition from child star (The Adams Family, Casper) to indie maverick (The Opposite of Sex, Buffalo 66) to big budget producer (Prozac Nation). In British director Sally Potter’s film The Man Who Cried, Ricci proves herself as a powerful dramatic actress.

Ricci stars as Suzie, a young British woman who works as showgirl in World War II Paris. The film boasts an impressive ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett as a Russian dancer, John Turturro as an Italian opera singer, and Johnny Depp as Ricci’s gypsy love interest, but the film belongs to Ricci. Ricci’s Suzie is poised, pale, and intensely quiet--a decided contrast from the giggling young woman at New York's Regency Hotel who admits her favorite hobby is “shopping.”

The part was a challenge to Ricci in many ways. Though a veteran in the business, Ricci has no formal training as an actress and worked with a dialogue coach to perfect her English accent. “I felt really lucky being offered this part,” she explains. “A twenty year old American being selected over better trained British actresses.”

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Though articulate in person, Ricci prefers not to speak in films: a perfect match for the quiet character of Suzie. “It’s not what you do in life,” Ricci says. “You listen and express.” And in The Man Who Cried, the less dialogue the better. “Especially with the accent,” says Ricci. “The way I work best is not thinking about what I'm doing, but when you are doing an accent you have to think about everything you do.”

Johnny Depp: “We Actually Had Sex and That Was Really Strange.”

The Man Who Cried marks the second pairing of Ricci and Johnny Depp, who co-starred in Legend of Sleepy Hollow. “I took [the part] before Johnny got it but I was really happy he was doing it,” says Ricci. Ricci was nine when she first met Depp and so it is understandable that she finds sex scenes with him “strange.” When asked how this film differed from others Ricci laughed: “Well, we were rooting around like pigs in this movie,” she says. “But we get along so well. When it got irritating, we just laughed about it.”

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