Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Christina Ricci
Christina Ricci is aware that her career as an actress is already having an impact on her young children.
In an interview with The Guardian published Monday, the Yellowjackets star, 42, said her 8-year-old son Freddie “won’t be able to avoid” having a feminist perspective as a result of his mom and stepdad.
“My husband, Mark [Hampton], is, I hate to say it because it sounds really obnoxious, a feminist,” Ricci said. “And Freddie is going to see that, and see his working mother.”
Added the Emmy nominee, “I think he’ll see women in a much more layered, complicated way, just by having grown up watching his mom do all this stuff.”
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The actress, who is currently playing strong female characters on two separate series — Misty Quigley on Yellowjackets and Marilyn Thornhill on Wednesday — said her son, whom she shares with ex James Heerdegen, also has an acute awareness about how women are perceived.
“He’s asking questions like, ‘Mom, is that racist?’ Or, ‘Mom, is that okay for women?’ ” Ricci told The Guardian. “He’s got this whole thing about not calling objects – like boats – she. He’ll correct me: ‘Women are not objects.’ “
Freddie, for his part, has actually been paying attention for quite a while. In an interview with PEOPLE in 2018, Ricci revealed that he was asking her questions about her job even at age 3½.
“He’s come home from preschool and been out in the world and said to me, ‘Mama, are you a movie actress?’ ” she recalled. “And I didn’t say that to him. People mention it to him, clearly. I have to then explain to him what it is, and we’ve shown him movies.”
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Some of the movies Freddie screened included the earliest forays into acting for Ricci, who also shares 1-year-old daughter Cleo with husband Hampton.
“In the beginning, he didn’t want to see anything where Mommy looked different and then he started actually requesting [films],” said the star.
Ricci explained that she showed her son her 1995 movie Casper, “and then we realized he hadn’t developed that ability to discern reality from fiction.”
She continued, “He started asking me about my childhood with my best friend, the ghost,” she said, laughing, about the family film. “And we were like, ‘Oh! Too soon.’ For a while, he was asking me a lot about ghosts and living alone with my dad and being a ghost and we were just like, ‘Oh no!’ “
