RICCI GETS HER WISH ... WITH A FAIRY-TALE ROLE.

Byline: Evan Henerson

Staff Writer

Her characters have been kidnapped, obsessed over by lesbian serial killers and handcuffed to radiators. She's played spooky kids, dominatrixes and a home-wrecking nymphet who famously proclaimed, "I don't have a heart of gold, and I don't grow one later."

Which is, in some measure, why Christina Ricci was ready for something less grim and more Grimm. Ricci found the titular distressed damsel of "Penelope" -- opening Friday -- attractive in part because if Penelope's going to be rescued, it will be on her own terms.

"Messages are lost in movies a little bit," says Ricci, 28. "The message of this movie is a very strong and obvious one about loving and accepting yourself. You really are the one who can make your life better."

A filthy-rich and pure-of-heart heiress though she is, Penelope has a problem. A family curse has left her with a pig nose, which frightens away suitors and which will disappear only when Penelope finds true love. An unlucky gambler (played by "Atonement" star James

McAvoy) may offer a way out. But before happily ever after, a scarf-hidden Penelope leaves her mansion and takes to the city, where she finds friendship with a moped-driving delivery girl (Reese Witherspoon, who is also the film's producer).

"My agents knew I had been wanting to do a fairy tale," explains Ricci, 28, "and this movie has a lot of metaphors that show how easily we get trapped in our own insecurities. This character has a real, tangible thing holding her back, and she manages to break free from her own imprisonment and face the world anyway."

Envisioning herself as part of a Disney animated movie, Ricci said she experimented with a different character approach.

"I thought it might be interesting to try a physicality closer to animated characters," she says. "When she's outside, she's a little more Chaplin-esque, falling around. I was using my whole body in ways that I don't all the time."

Then there's the nose, an intricate silicone snout that placed Ricci in the makeup chair for up to 90 minutes at a time and would itch substantially as the shooting day wore on.

Not a lot of fun, the actress recalls, but Ricci has been through worse for the sake of her art.

"When I was 13 and doing 'Addams Family Values,' they painted me to match the wallpaper," she says. "It took about three hours, and I had to stand very, very still. It was a lot more onerous than this.

"I would say the biggest challenge (for 'Penelope') was the fact that we were in London in the middle of winter," she continues. "I turn purple when I get cold, and it doesn't match the prosthetic."

Ricci's general trouperism in the face of uncomfortable prosthetic hours was a boon to first-time director Mark Palansky.

"She and I are basically the same age. This is my first film and her 30th or 40th. But doing this for so long, she has sat in these chairs countless times before, maybe not for prosthetics," says Palansky. "She has an enormous amount of respect for the process and how much it helps everyone else."

A native of Santa Monica, Ricci was discovered at age 7 while acting in a school Christmas play. She made her film debut in 1990 at age 9 opposite Cher and Winona Ryder in "Mermaids," then starred as the youngest of the Addams clan in a pair of "Addams Family" movies as well as kid-friendly fare like "Casper" and "That Darn Cat."

Moving into teen and adult roles in the late 1990s, Ricci's roles have been decidedly edgier, from Ang Lee's dark suburban tale "The Ice Storm" to "Prozac Nation" and the malevolent Dede Truitt of "The Opposite of Sex."

She played the girlfriend of Charlize Theron's Oscar- winning Aileen Wuornos in "Monster" and starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson in Craig Brewer's "Black Snake Moan."

Ricci has completed filming on Andy and Larry Wachowski's "Speed Racer," due out in May. In taking on the role of Speed's girlfriend, Trixie, Ricci says she has essentially fulfilled a kind of destiny since "people have been telling me my whole life I look like anime."

And don't expect the "Racer" girl to be overly imperiled either.

"She races in cars, she fights. She flies the helicopter," Ricci says. "She does everything the boys do."

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

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Christina Ricci