By Humberto Guida, Photographs: Mark Liddell

hristina Ricci isn't crazy. She just plays crazy onscreen. No other actress of her generation can do slightly off-center, awkwardly interesting female leads quite like Ricci. She looks the part: Her snowwhite skin, (usually) raven hair and equally compelling expression—as placid as it is impaling—are straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. And her tiny, unimposing fivefoot- one frame (so small she often makes her own clothes) only accentuates her haunting qualities. But fans of Ricci have more often been seduced by the psychology behind her performances. A question she regularly encounters concerns the relationship between her and the characters she plays. She talks about falling in love with them, and how she relates to them, especially the most off-kilter ones. Still, she's not sure most of us get her, though it's never quite clear whether Ricci simply amuses herself by throwing everybody just a little bit off.

"No, people don't know me. It would be really difficult for someone to know me without spending time with me," the 26- year-old actress asserts (in a voice so childlike she admits some people still ask to speak to an adult when she answers the phone). "You've only seen me playing other people. Why would you know me? I've never played myself, have I?"

But when she is asked a question about her "process," her preparation for getting into character, she says, "I can't really describe it. It's personal, and a lot of it is really subconscious. It has to do with living sort of in the character. But it's much more complex than that. It really runs deep."

Our conversation takes place while she's on location in Spokane, Washington, on her final shoot day for next year's Home of the Brave, a film about three soldiers who have trouble readjusting to their lives after lengthy tours in Iraq. It features Jessica Biel, 50 Cent and Samuel L. Jackson; Ricci plays a soldier's wife. The shoot was plagued by bad weather, and production was briefly halted due to a union strike, so she's exhaustedly looking forward to returning to her Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Los Feliz mansion (on the market for $3.1 million after she broke up with former beau actor/ director Adam Goldberg). "It's like the last day of school for me and I'm letting everybody know, because they have to stay a little longer," she says with a laugh, before reflecting on how far she has come from being a child actress who utterly despised taking childish roles. "The parts that I have done this year are getting more to where I want them to be." ...

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