On the cusp of her Broadway debut in “Time Stands Still” this Fall, Christina Ricci confessed at the recent Whitney Art Party in Soho that she has a “crippling fear” of performing in front of crowds. The prolific actress who isn’t camera shy said she gets “horrible” stage fright.

1. Maritime Hotel (363 W. 16th St., 212-242-4300): “I remember seeing this building as a little kid when it was The Covenant House. I’d say, ‘If I ever ran away, this is where I’d stay.’ It’s like a fulfillment of a childhood fantasy.

2. Barney’s New York (660 Madison Ave., 212-826-8900): “I still love Barney’s — even if it’s just window shopping or walking through. I also love their jewelry department.

3. Forlini’s (93 Baxter St., 212-349-6779): “I used to eat here as a kid. Those red booths! Classic Italian food. Love it.

4. Metroplitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Ave., 212-233-0507): “I really love the statue hall. When I was a teenager, I’d come here alone. It’s so peacful.”

5. Odeon (145 W. Broadway, 212-229-2670): “It’s so art deco and feels like classic NY to me.”

5. SoHo House (29 Ninth Ave., 212-627-9800): “It’s laid-back and loungey — you can play pool and just hang for hours.”

6. Intersection of Little Italy and Chinatown “I used to live in this neighborhood with my mom and still really love it.”

From am New York

Playing a dead person in the creepy thriller “After.Life,” which opens in theaters Friday, was a painful experience for Christina Ricci.

The waif-like actress spends much of the movie reclining in a skimpy red slip — and sometimes nothing at all — on a cold porcelain table in a mortician’s preparation room.

“My spine and the back of my hips got bruised on the first day,” explains the former child star of “Mermaids” and “The Addams Family,” who had flown in to L.A. from London where she’s been making the period drama “Bel Ami” with everyone’s favorite vampire hunk, Robert Pattinson.

“I had to lie back down on the bruises,” she says of her many scenes supine on that table. “Finally, the doctor came and he said, ‘All I can do is give you painkillers.’ The crew tried to warm the table for me. Someone brought in an electric blanket. . . . But it was November and we were in a poorly insulated warehouse in New York City. I got sick.”

Clearly, Ricci is no stranger to suffering for her art. This is the actress who spent large chunks of time half naked and chained to a radiator for 2006′s “Black Snake Moan.” And “After.Life” was no less demanding. Co-written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker, Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, the film casts Ricci as an unpleasant schoolteacher named Anna, who has a difficult relationship with longtime beau Paul (Justin Long). She also takes a lot of pills — purportedly for headaches — and is prone to nosebleeds in the shower.

Anna comes to the attention of the efficient and creepy mortician Eliot (Liam Neeson) when she attends a funeral. And that’s when the movie takes a turn for the weird. After she has a fight with Paul, a weepy Anna appears to die in a car crash.

Or does she?

When she wakes up she sees a white light; not the warm, inviting one described by those who believe they have brushed up against the afterlife, but a cold, sterile glare from the fluorescent light in the preparation room at Eliot’s mortuary.

She insists she’s still alive. Eliot, who says that he can communicate with the dead, tells Anna she’s fighting her demise and begins to prepare her body. She, of course, resists.

Despite the frightening nature of the film, Ricci hesitates to call “After.Life” a horror movie. “For me, the script read much more like a sort of character piece,” she explains. “I kind of missed the scariness of it because I was sort of taken in by this question of death and if you have feelings after you’re dead. If I woke up tomorrow dead, how would I feel? That’s what I talked to Agnieszka about when I first met her.”

Ricci liked the fact that she got to “sit in the middle of what it would be like to be dead. Anna has to believe at a certain point she is. I think in the beginning she believes it too.”

The actress put her trust in Neeson, who made the film before the death of wife Natasha Richardson a year ago from a ski accident.

“When you are in a situation with another actor this dynamic starts to exist where you have to trust and you have to give over to them,” she says. “I think that relationship is very organic to the situation.”

When making a movie, Ricci doesn’t socialize much, preferring to ruminate over her parts in her hotel room. Eventually, the characters begin to invade her psyche.

“Anna was really creeping in one morning when I woke up and looked in the mirror and said, ‘Oh, my God, I am so pale. I have gone Goth!’ ”

From the Los Angeles Times

How did you first hear about RAINN?
When I was 15, I was reading about Tori Amos in Rolling Stone magazine, and she talked about how she, along with Scott [Berkowitz, RAINN’s president], had co-founded RAINN. And after that, they’ll ask us as actresses, “If you come to this fashion show, we’ll donate $10,000 to your favorite charity.” And I always picked RAINN. And I always had an interest in rape crisis intervention and what happens to women when rape is untreated, and rape-trauma syndrome. And then I did a movie that was all about rape trauma syndrome, and after that movie, RAINN invited me to become even more active and to become their spokesperson.

Have you ever been to Capitol Hill before?
I’ve been to the Hill once before, so this is my second time. It’s intimidating as all hell, every time I come, but then it always turns out to be a great thing. I feel so fortunate to be … one of the few Americans that actually can go and meet with people and say, “This is what I care about — please help us.”

Are you nervous about meeting members of Congress?
It’s just intimidating. I mean, I barely graduated high school, and I’m an actress, so we’re not by nature that intelligent. But when there are things that really matter to you, it’s great to know that you can actually take part in making a difference. I can’t volunteer and be an advocate because I’m not anonymous, so this is how I can help in this situation.

Who would you most like to meet while you’re in Washington?
Oh, my God, if I met Biden, I would lose my mind. He wrote the Violence Against Women Act, and I love him. I think he’s great. And of course, no doubt, I want to meet Obama. But that’s not really going to happen.

Who are some of your political heroes?
I actually love James Carville, but I know he might not be considered by some to be a political hero. His work over the years, I really love and respect him. And I love [Rep.] Ted Poe (R-Texas) for all of the work he’s done for our cause and for children’s rights and no parole for sex offenders. I just love him. And Biden; Biden’s a huge hero of mine. I was so excited when he got picked [as vice president]. I was just overjoyed.

Do you affiliate yourself with a political party?
For now, while I’m doing this kind of work, I prefer to publicly be bipartisan, just because I feel like this is a bipartisan issue. And I don’t feel like the figurehead of it should be at all partisan.

Is the timing of your visit important?
Recession always makes crime rise, and we’re seeing a definite rise in rapes and assaults, and our funding is going down because of the recession, when really what needs to happen is we need to be taking care of our society right now while it’s suffering from the damage that was done to our economic strength in the past. You don’t abandon the people while you fix the economy. You come back and it’s going to be like ’70s warfare again on the streets of Manhattan.
And given what just happened recently, it’s been all over the news, with the girl, Jaycee [Dugard] — I feel like this is a really great time for people to take note and for people to say this legislation is incredibly timely and necessary.

What response have you been getting from lawmakers on Capitol Hill?
People really respond to this. We have some great supporters. There was money for RAINN included in a Senate bill, but it wasn’t included in the House’s. And then language was attached to the House’s bill to try and protect RAINN, so now we need the support of certain Congress people, so that when they go in for negotiations, someone is there championing … the Violence Against Women Act, which directly goes to affecting RAINN and rape crisis centers.

What educational experience from your research for “Black Snake Moan” has helped you in your work with RAINN?
I had been working a lot with RAINN over the years, and I had done a lot of women’s studies on my own and read a lot about victims of these crimes, and I had this sense of wanting to do something that would really highlight the injustice or people’s misunderstanding of what’s really going on when a woman exhibits the symptoms of rape trauma syndrome.

What was the extent of your political and advocacy engagement before joining forces with RAINN?
Nothing that was really public. I would always go and march for the president that I felt should be elected, but nothing like this. It’s so amazing, just being a regular person and all of a sudden someone’s like, “You should come to the Hill and talk with congressmen.” I was just like, “Wait, what? You can do that? Are you serious? A’ight, cool.” It’s been really, really amazing, and when I talk to my friends about it, they say, “Oh, you can do that?” And I just think that not enough people in our country are educated about their ability to actually talk to their representatives.

What do you think the role is for writers, actors and directors to dispel or propel the stigma and stereotypes around rape?
I think … as actors, we could lend ourselves and sort of attract attention to an issue, and then have the people with information put it out there and be heard … I think it’s very, very important that we continue to do socially conscious films. It really is my dream to only do those kinds of movies, as pretentious as that sounds. … But it’s a business, so once in a blue moon you’ll get something where you really believe in it and you really have to do it. And then the rest of the time you’re like, “All right, this is awesome — cool, it’s a comedy.” You have to climb up the ladder.

What other political issues are you interested in taking part in?
This is really it. This is mine. I have a lot of interest in things like the Fresh Air Fund and programs for inner-city kids. I’ve just been concentrating so much on this that I haven’t had time necessarily to get into that, but I think there’s something to be done about the number of children who are really abandoned in this country and not cared for. And people go outside this country all of time to adopt [children], and it’s like, you know what, take a trip to the south side of Chicago, see how you feel.

From The Hill

The tiny 29-year-old, who has been the public face for RAINN since 2007, was dressed in a short black minidress and stiletto heels, her pin-straight raven mane slung over her shoulders.

Not exactly the look of a conventional lobbyist, but Miss Ricci said she made the rounds on Capitol Hill to advocate for more funding for rape hot-line centers, where Miss Ricci has volunteered her time and encourages others to do the same.

“It only takes a few hours a month, and you can [take calls from victims] from your couch,” she said.

The “Monster” actress also said, “I am not an active Democrat. I met with Republicans and Democrats. [Supporting rape victims] is a bipartisan issue.”

When G2 showed Miss Ricci The Washington Times’ front-page story on the rape epidemic in the Congo, Miss Ricci expressed her outrage.

“Rape as a means of warfare has been going on for centuries, and I don’t know what we can do to stop it,” she said.

As for sexual assaults in the United States, she says part of her agenda is to institute stricter sentences for sex offenders. When asked what she had in mind, she said, “I don’t know, but people need to understand that rapists are career rapists.”

Among her upcoming professional projects is the film “After.Life” with Liam Neeson, whose wife, actress Natasha Richardson, died in March after a skiing accident.

Miss Ricci, who called Mr. Neeson “a lovely man,” said she plays a woman caught between life and death after a car accident. Mr. Neeson portrays a funeral director in the horror flick, which was shot before Miss Richardson’s sudden death. Miss Ricci said Mr. Neeson “won’t be doing press” when the movie makes its debut.

From the Washington Times

She’s urging members of Congress to support increased funding for the national sexual assault hotline, which provides counseling to victims of rape and sexual abuse through a network of local affiliates. Many of those state and local partners have seen their funding cut in recent months.

Such services are particularly important to those who don’t have health insurance, Ricci said.

“That’s the thing: This has a lot to do with health care because, you know, people without health care can go to . . . these publicly funded services, these social services, and get the help that they need, the medical help that they need,” she said.

“And if you cut all the funding to them you’re adding just even more stress to the whole health care [system]. I mean, this is really a health care issue. . . . People who are raped tend to are twice as likely to suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, suicide.”

Ricci said she got more involved in the cause as an offshoot of her work on the 2006 film “Black Snake Moan,” where she plays the victim of severe sexual and physical abuse.

“I actually did know quite a bit about it, so when I read that screen play I recognized what the character was suffering from,” she said. “And rape trauma syndrome to so many people is so confusing because they don’t really understand the psychology that goes behind what happens to somebody once they’ve been raped and left to deal with this violent crime the rest of their life, without treatment.”

Click HERE to see the video interview with Christina Ricci.

From ABC News

Actress Christina Ricci met with lawmakers today on behalf of RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) to stress the importance of such sexual assault services as the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

We had a chance to sit down with Ricci during her visit and talked about not only her work with RAINN (she’s a spokeswoman for them), but also her favorite politician and what it’s like to sit down and talk shop with lawmakers.

From Politico