Christina Ricci stars as Trixie, an outgoing young woman who’s equally unafraid of dressing girlie and kicking a little butt, in the big screen version of the classic anime series Speed Racer. Trixie’s wardrobe in the movie makes a wild fashion statement and Ricci says she had a great time getting all dressed up in her Speed Racer costumes. “I enjoyed it immensely - a lot of pink, pink and red which is kind of awesome. I liked her clips and her makeup. It was really fun. It's fun to play someone who's a little bit cartoonish. They dressed me up like a doll, but then they let me go and fight people and race cars and fly a helicopter so it was fun.”
Trixie isn’t just the girlfriend of Speed Racer (played by Emile Hirsch), she’s an important member of the Racer family’s racing team. From her vantage point high up in her pink helicopter, Trixie keeps an eye on Speed as he takes on some pretty rough characters in his Mach 5 racecar. But if Ricci had her way, she’d have been even more intimately involved in the action scenes. “It was really fun and it was something that I loved because that really is the sort of ultimate feminist thing where you can be as girlie as you want to be, but you're still as capable and as able to do everything that the boys can do. But I still want more.”
Ricci fans may have to wait for the film’s release on DVD to see the actress really show off her action skills. After three weeks of karate training, she was able to do her own stunts however much of what she learned didn't make the movie's final cut. “They didn't use a lot of my fight stuff,” revealed Ricci. “I was sad.”
Action issues aside, at the film's Los Angeles press day Ricci recalled it was the appeal of being a part of a movie based on the anime series and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski that made her come onboard the project. “With this movie it was like, 'Oh, wow. A Speed Racer movie. That's exciting. It's exciting that I'm being called in to read for that. Oh, it's the Wachowski Brothers directing? I've always wanted to work with them.' So then you read it and make sure that there's nothing offensive in it and then it's kind of like a no brainer, really. Of course I'd want to be in this movie.”
The majority of the scenes in Speed Racer involved heavy green screen work, and the actors had to trust in the vision of the Wachowski Brothers as they went about acting out their roles. “They tried to prepare us and they showed us a lot of images, and we could know as much or as little as we wanted to about everything,” said Ricci. “As much as you know or you think you know, it's all really very specifically in their heads. When the whole cast got there, the first time we all arrived Larry [Wachowski] took us through the art department and tried to show us how this thing was done, what this concept was and what that concept was, and showing us the sort of concept of the bubble where they go and shoot everything in 360 degrees and then they put us in it. Now, how much of that I actually understood I'm not sure, but you get a sense from these directors that the vision they have in their head is so complete and so intricate and complex that it really inspires a great deal of trust and confidence.”
“Also, there's the knowledge that I'd be doing myself a great disservice if I even attempted to think that I knew what they were thinking in their heads and to not just do what they were telling me to do. The only way to make sure that you fit into what their vision is, and what will ultimately be manifest onscreen, is to do what they tell you to do. So there's really a sense on set that everyone does exactly what the Wachowskis tell you to do.”
Ricci added, “In a way, once you kind of let that control go it allows you to just sort of play and have fun, and it couldn't have been a more playful set. It was complete imagine time. It was like an imagination Christmas and we're all in these funny costumes and laughing at each other, making jokes. And the cast was having a great time and we all loved each other so much. Our confidence in them really freed us up to commit to this style of acting and the kind of dialogue that we had to deliver in a way that I don't think we would've if we were busy trying to control things.”
The final product is visually impressive, and Ricci loved the vibrant colors and the pop style the Wachowskis chose to use in the movie. “I find that incredibly gratifying and satisfying because you get to see all these colors and the flashbulbs breaking into hearts and stuff,” explained Ricci. “It's stuff that people wouldn't normally do in film because they think, 'Well, you can't really do that.' But they did it. They were like, 'We want sparkles. We want hearts and rainbow colors.' It's just like, 'Yeah, sparkles!' I found the whole thing to be so fun. It's indulgent, but a really fun indulgence. It was like, 'We're going to do whatever the hell we want to and it's going to be awesome.'”
The 28 year-old Ricci’s been working in films for a dozen and half years and has literally grown up in front of our eyes. Getting her start in Hollywood at such a young age, Ricci can empathize with the current batch of young actors whose private lives are fodder for tabloids. “I went through the same sort of growing up pains and partying and everything in my late teens and early 20s, but there wasn't the level of scrutiny and media attention and paparazzi then that there is now. So I got to go through all of that without people taking pictures of me and judging me. I did it already and I'm not interested in that anymore, but I think that had there been the same amount of media attention I certainly would be in as much trouble as everyone else is these days. I mean, you're a teenager and in your early 20. You do stupid things, really dumb things. If people are there documenting the whole thing, that's going to add a whole level of self-consciousness and confusion and shame that leads to more trouble.”
