Christina Ricci

Born: February 12, 1980
Where: Santa Monica, California

The distinctive actress and producer made her adult feature breakthrough in Ang Lee's acclaimed drama The Ice Storm with Sigourney Weaver.

From the beginning of her career as a precocious child actress, the daughter of an estate agent and lawyer proved a mesmerizing screen presence.

(she used to act out shrieking therapy sessions after hearing her father - who was a psychiatrist before turning to the law - counselling clients).

She excelled at playing solemn children, beginning with her turn as the youngest of Cher's two daughters in the uneven drama Mermaids.

When Barry Sonnenfeld cast the young thespian as the drolly mischievous Wednesday in The Addams Family her star status was firmed.

Her interpretation of the unfeeling imp was so popular that the sequel Addams Family Values was virtually built around her character.

Born in California but raised in Montclair, New Jersey, Ricci is the youngest of four.

She was "discovered" in a school Christmas pageant by a local drama critic and encouraged to appear in TV commercials.

By the time she reached her teens, she was already a screen veteran and got to play relatively "normal" characters in Casper and Now and Then.

After suffering through the unnecessary remake of Disney's That Darn Cat, Ricci fulfilled her early promise and graduated to more adult fare as the sexually precocious daughter in The Ice Storm.

In Don Roos' The Opposite of Sex, Ricci had one of the best roles of her career, playing the film's narrator, a pregnant teen with tons of attitude.

In 1998, she was a tap dancing kidnap victim forced to pretend to be her abductor's wife in Vincent Gallo's Buffalo 66 and a Barbra Streisand-obsessed artist in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Continuing her streak, she filmed roles in several ensemble features, including Doug Liman's Go, I Woke Up Early the Day I Died and 200 Cigarettes.

In 1999, Ricci appeared opposite Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's haunting rendition of Sleepy Hollow.

She went on to helm her first project as a producer with Prozac Nation and also starred in the film.

In 2002, Ricci again produced and starred in the film Pumpkin, a satire about a sorority girl who falls for a disabled man which also made very minor impact.

After detouring through a slate of minor indie thrillers (Miranda and The Gathering), Ricci took a highly publicized stint on the final season of TV's Ally McBeal.

She returned to the big screen as a neurotic actress who intentionally or unintentionally tortures smitten writer Jason Biggs in writer-director Woody Allen's Anything Else.

In 2003, she played the lesbian lover of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster with Oscar-winnner, Charlize Theron, and she went on to co-star in Wes Craven's werewolf shocker Cursed.

Ricci showed in 2006 that she was still able to shock with the role of Rae - a sex-crazed teenager - in Black Snake Moan alongside Samuel L Jackson.

Recent work includes the role of Penelope in the modern fairyytale about an aristocratic heiress born under a curse. Her next project will be the war drama The White Rose, with Liam Neeson and Albert Finney.