Christina Ricci on staying grounded as a child star

Larry King: You were a success as a child actress.

Christina Ricci: Mmm-hmm.

Larry King: Why do so many who were actresses, child protégés, don’t make it later?

Christina Ricci: Well – this is interesting.

Larry King: I understand there’s a lot of them.

Christina Ricci: Yeah well this is interesting, because I think this plays into my connection to Zelda, a little bit. I think that kind of fame, if the first thing you experience is that level of fame, how do you ever match that rush ever again? So for me as a child like, I just thought you ended up at the Oscars. You were on TV all the time. You know what I mean? I didn’t have, I didn’t have a full life of experience to know that what was happening to me… I mean intellectually I understood that, but emotionally it’s a different thing and I think that then you spend the rest of your life trying to top that, and how do you top that?

Larry King: So what does it do to you, and how did you avoid that? Or did you?

Christina Ricci: Um, I think I had, I struggled with it certainly. And it took me… I’m a very, very analytical person. And especially about myself I think, and I’m obsessed with human behavior. So I was able to sort of recognize a little bit of what was happening, and why I maybe was a little out of touch with the world, and what was normal. And so now I kind of operate under the sort of, I know I don’t have normal experiences, so you know I kind of take that into consideration.

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