Christina Ricci has a hard time being taken seriously thanks to her height.
The 36-year-old actress has enjoyed a string of Hollywood hits dating back to when she was a child star in Mermaids, opposite Cher, in 1990 - when she was just 10 years old - but nearly three decades later she still hasn't earned the respect she deserves from Hollywood executives who scoff at her short stature.
"I do have to fight to be taken seriously," she tells Elle.com. "Being very small and young-looking and an actress? Oh my God. People are just like, 'Well, this one's an idiot. Clearly'."
Christina portrays Zelda Fitzgerald, the real-life wife of American literary icon F. Scott Fitzgerald, in new Amazon show Z: The Beginning of Everything. Zelda is often depicted as a rogue Roaring Twenties figure in history books and Ricci felt connected to her character through her own experiences.
"I'm learning how to manage that," she says of processing other people's perceptions of her. "I think that for me, though, in terms of fighting stereotypes or fighting to be seen in a different way, this show itself is a huge example of that. I'm not a traditional leading lady. I don't look like one. I don't act like one. I've never in my life been cast in this sort of romantic lead. But you have to fight for yourself; nobody is going to do it for me. I'll do it myself."
Following the history-making global Women's March protest last Saturday (21Jan17), Christina also hopes her fresh Amazon show will help shed some light on important gender issues.
"The sad truth is that it's usually the other women who are not taking you seriously," she states. "The reason misogyny doesn't really seem to lessen as much over time as other social problems is because I think women really buy into it and perpetuate it in a lot of ways. I'm excited about this next generation coming up because they don't seem to have those issues."
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