Christina Ricci reveals she escaped from ‘physically violent’ and ‘failed cult leader’ father thanks to childhood stardom

Christina Ricci said her fame as a child star helped her escape her father, a “failed cult leader.”

The 44-year-old Addams Family actress opened up about her past and her now-estranged father Ralph Ricci during a chat with Demi Lovato for the new Hulu documentary Child Star.

“I had a very chaotic home,” she told the series co-director and star of her unconventional upbringing.

“My father was a failed cult leader,” Ricci admitted. “And so he had the same kind of really crazy narcissism that comes with someone who wants to lead a cult.”

The Yellowjackets star, who put her stunning Hollywood home on the market for $2 million last summer, also said her father was “very physically abusive.”

“There was never any peace in my house,” she recalls.

However, she said she was able to “find peace on set” during that time, which was a stark contrast to her home life.

Ricci said she felt safe while working on set.

“I knew nothing totally crazy was going to happen,” she said of the time she started working as a child actor.

“Nobody would really get mad and act like they were going to drive the car into a wall,” she said. “There was a refuge of emotional safety.”

Ricci was born in Santa Monica, California and grew up the youngest of four, along with her siblings Pia, Rafael and Dante, in New Jersey.

Ricci and her siblings were raised by their father, a therapist turned lawyer turned primal screamer, and their mother Sarah Ricci, a model turned realtor turned stage mom.

Her parents divorced when she was 13, shortly after filming Addams Family Values.

Many years later, she and her father became estranged, she said The guard from 2000.

Ricci, who was 20 at the time, said she had not had contact with her father for about five years since she was a teenager.

“I know it sounds cold, but it was one of the first things I ever did in my life: take care of myself,” she said. “Deciding that only people who deserve it should be in my life.”

In the same interview, she also talked about how the abnormal world of Hollywood normalized her and spoke about her turbulent relationship with her father.

She said he was “a very paranoid man” who taught them that “there is no such thing as selflessness, no one ever really likes you, people are only out for themselves.”

Ricci made her film debut at age nine in Mermaids in 1990, playing Cher’s on-screen daughter and Winona Ryder’s sister.

The following year, she landed her breakthrough role as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel, Addams Family Values ​​(1993).

She subsequently starred in Casper and Now and Then in 1995, which cemented her status as a child star.