Christina Ricci: Child Star, No More

When is the exact moment that a child star becomes a star in the Hollywood universe? For 21-year-old actress Christina Ricci (who began her movie career with "Mermaids" at just 9 years old), that moment occurs with her new art house film "The Man Who Cried," opposite Johnny Depp.

"The love scenes we did were a little weird," Ricci says. "But what are you going to do? We had strange, theoretical sex scenes in this movie. They're violent and awkward and just strange. There's no sexual tension between us whatsoever, so we just kind of laughed about it."

The duo (who starred together in Tim Burton's version of "Sleepy Hollow") play gypsies in the film, so, as Ricci explains, there wasn't much skin showing in those movie moments that help cement the fact that Ricci is not a kid any more.

"In gypsy culture, nudity is considered obscene, so even a man and wife would not take off their clothes when they had sex. It's considered to be disrespectful to your own body, like if you really respect and love yourself, you keep yourself covered," she says.

And while the actress kept covered in that film, she has since passed another key moment in her passage into on-screen adulthood. In her next movie, "Prozac Nation," the now-voluptuous Ricci appears nude on screen for the first time. "I did do my first nude scene. But everyone's saying I 'had to' do it, as though I was tied to a chair and all my clothes were stripped off me. But in reality, the director and I decided to do it [because] we felt that it was important for the movie," she explains.

But while she may sound and look all grown up, Ricci isn't quite as mature about stripping down for the camera as she'd like to be. "It's just embarrassing, really. There's no other way to put it. There are like 50 people watching you and you're just like, 'Uh, I hope my ass looks good!'"