Christina Ricci’s process of becoming and engulfing in and out of character.

Renowned for the volatile emotional breadth of her on-screen performances, Christina Ricci reveals a love of tranquility and cosiness in her real life away from the cameras.

Where do you call home right now in your life? Why do you live there? And when did that last change?

Right now I live in Los Angeles, California. We live here because… I'm an actress, I guess? Yes. We live here because I'm an actress, but also because we live close to my sister and her family and kids and my mother. And the last time… I've just moved from one part of LA to another over the summer. But before that I moved back to LA from Brooklyn in 2018.

Which room do you spend most time in?

I definitely spend the most time in our living room/kitchen.

Where was home for you as a child?

I lived in Montauk, Long Island until I was six, and then Montclair, New Jersey until I was 14 and then I spent the rest of my childhood living in New York City.

Can you describe the first place you lived when you moved away from the home where you grew up?

When I moved out of my mom's house I was 16: I moved in with a friend who had a loft on the Bowery – not a fancy loft, a real old Bowery loft – in 1996. It was above a kitchen supply place, and my friend had built in a shower and put up a couple of walls for rooms and we had space heaters. (Laughs) It was not glamorous in the least! But it was right around the corner from all the things that at 16, 17 everybody wanted to go to. The restaurants and bars we went to and all that fun stuff, you could do in New York City at 16, 17 then.

Can you remember the first time you felt homesick? 

I have never really felt that homesick. But now I do miss my children a lot and my husband when I travel.

Are you any good at DIY? 

I'm pretty good at DIY. I once replaced all of the light switches in my house with dimmers in my twenties when I lived alone. I didn't know I was supposed to turn off the electricity, so I found out later that I could have killed myself. But I accomplished it – woohoo!

What’s on your bedside table? 

My laptop, a little plate that I put hair ties and bobby pins and stuff in, and there's always sparkling water and usually a half-drunk Diet Coke.

What’s the furthest you’ve ever travelled from home?

I think it's probably Australia. I'm not great with geography (laughs) so I don't know what the other side of the world from here is! I should have looked at a globe before I answered this question. But I've pretty much been almost everywhere, except for Africa. 

What most strongly triggers a sense of being home for you?

I think it's calm and cosiness. Whenever I would travel for work and then come home and not have to work, I would spend days just in my house in my pyjamas watching television on my couch – usually with my dogs and cats. And now I have kids, so I do that with my children. So I'd say pyjamas trigger a sense of home for me, for sure. Any kind of sweat pant loungewear.

Where do you see home being for you in 20 years’ time?

I have always dreamt of living in the UK, actually. I would really love to do that. Hopefully I can within 20 years.

When you are travelling, what does it take to make you feel at home?

I do travel with travel candles. Most of my luggage is cosy, at-home stuff. Because even when I'm travelling and staying in hotels, my favourite thing to do is to get in bed, watch TV and order room service! I don't really enjoy going out at night or going to parties any more. I like having people over to watch movies and television with me. 

Is your home a source of creativity and self-expression? 

I'd say it kind of is, because I have two children and they're constantly being creative: drawing, painting, coming up with ideas about who they are, how life is and who they want to be. So to see that excitement for life – really, they're creating themselves – is pretty inspiring.

How does the physical environment of your home influence your emotional well-being?

I have to have a very tidy home to have emotional well-being; I hate when the house is cluttered. But unfortunately our house is always cluttered because we have kids and because we're busy, so it's always a disaster. We have more clothes than we have places to put them in our bedroom, which is a problem. But I do like to have at least one floor that's very tidy, which is our living room and kitchen. So perhaps that's why I spend so much time there.