Child Star Shocker! Christina Ricci Reveals Hollywood SAVED Her From Violent 'Failed Cult Leader' Father!

Christina Ricci is opening up about her childhood in the limelight… But it might not be exactly what you expect to hear.

Demi Lovato’s directorial debut Child Star, which examines what growing up in the spotlight does to a person, is officially available to stream on Hulu now. It features interviews with Drew Barrymore, JoJo Siwa, Kenan Thompson, and others… Namely The Addams Family star, who had a much different experience with early stardom than her contemporaries.

See, child stardom didn’t wreak havoc on her mental health as it does for some. No, Hollywood saved her from a home that was already doing that.

In a candid conversation with Demi, Christina recalls:

“I was really unhappy in my home life and at school. I was really bored and I was getting into really crazy trouble at 7. As soon as I started going on auditions every day after school with my mother, all of that stopped. But what I really loved is getting to go with my mom on the bus to New York. My mother was kept in a place in my home where she was not present. As soon as she and I got out of the house, she had a personality. We became very close.”

Her mother was “kept” in a limiting space? By whom? Well, Christina’s volatile father, it would seem. She explains to Demi how he caused her to have a “very chaotic” childhood:

“My father was a failed cult leader and so he had all that really crazy narcissism that goes along with someone wanting to run a cult.”

WTF! A “failed cult leader”?? Poor Christina! And a good reminder you don’t have to go to Tinseltown to find crazy narcissism…

The Then and Now star goes on to reveal her father was “physically violent” — though she doesn’t say if he abused her or her mother or both. Knowing these kinds of men it’s always eventually both, though, isn’t it. She says:

“He was very physically violent. There was never any peace in my house.”

That’s just so, so awful. No wonder she began acting out at a young age. And why she feels Hollywood provided her a safe haven.

She goes on to reveal that acting felt like her own personal escape from all the chaos of her home life:

“I knew nothing totally insane was going to happen. No one was going to get really mad and pretend to drive the car into a wall. For me there was a refuge of emotional safety.”

Wow. We’re so glad that she could seek refuge somewhere away from home.

Christina scored her first film role at just 9 years old, acting opposite Cher and Winona Ryder in Mermaids. Just one year later she became a huge star with her iconic signature role as Wednesday Addams.

Last year, the Yellowjackets star told The Sunday Times that her parents, Sarah and Ralph Ricci, split up when she was just 13 years old and that she has not had any contact with her father since. Sounds like it didn’t take long to get away from him for good — thanks to child stardom!

But in her conversation with Demi, she admits that as she became more and more famous, she did get wild. She began to abuse drugs and alcohol:

“I don’t remember feeling like there was any other way to be happy. If you felt like you had absolutely no control over your like, that is one of the few things you actually had control over.”

We’re sure those emotional scars left from her father have been tough to face. But we’re glad that she seems to be in a better place now.

It’s certainly inneresting to hear what a positive experience the now-44-year-old had as a child star in comparison to so many others. It sounds like ANYTHING else was better than what she was experiencing at home.