Prozac Nation with Christina Ricci

Mental illness can, at times, be downright ugly. That's true of depression, and it's definitely true of actress Christina Ricci's portrayal of the disorder in the movie, Prozac Nation.

Based on the 1994 best-selling memoir of the same title, the movie chronicles author Elizabeth Wurtzel's real-life battle with clinical depression, replete with bouts of suicidal behavior, insomnia, self-mutilation and alcohol and drug abuse. But it's not what the character does to herself alone that's so ugly—although at times it's unspeakably so—but also the abhorrent way in which she treats those around her.

Lizzie, as Ricci is called in the film, endlessly rages at her mother (Jessica Lange), lobbing accusations and obscenities at her strongest supporter. Lizzie betrays her college roommate and best friend Ruby (Michelle Williams) by doing sexual favors for her boyfriend, then showing no remorse when confronted. And, without proof or apparent reason, Lizzie accosts her own boyfriend Rafe (Jason Biggs) for cheating on her, then charges that he "gets off" on caring for his disabled younger sister.

"Sometimes when I was doing this movie I'd think, 'I'm everybody's worst nightmare right now,'" Ricci admits, alternately sipping coffee and Diet Coke at a restaurant in New York City's Mercer Hotel. The actress' petite 5-foot 1-inch frame and large, kind eyes make it difficult to envision her as anyone's nightmare, although the physical resemblance between her and Wurtzel is eerie. "This girl has problems, and we don't romanticize it at all. I think that was really hard for distributors. They've dealt with dark ideas before, but usually there's something pretty. This is just ugly."

Movie distributors might not be the only tough sell: Ricci's character so flouts the convention of a sympathetic protagonist that many moviegoers may also be in for a rude awakening.

"People who are depressed are not sympathetic," says Paul Miller, one of the film's three producers. "They can be narcissistic, they can be mean, and that's just the truth." This honest depiction of depression is exactly what "Prozac Nation" is trying to put out there, just as Wurtzel did originally, in writing. "The book was seminal for being the first to be truthful about depression as a subject, and we didn't try to put a Band-Aid on it or create a happy ending. No matter what you think of the film, Christina's portrayal is certainly very true to life," Miller says.

The movie's goal is a valiant one, especially given the National Institute of Mental Health's estimate that 18.8 million Americans, or 9.5 percent, currently have a depressive disorder. And as any professional in the field of psychology knows, education is probably the strongest weapon in combatting the stigma that further prevents those who are mentally ill from leading a normal life. What professionals also know is that as unattractive as depression's symptoms may appear, they stem from heartbreaking internal feelings of isolation, loneliness, self-hatred and anxiety. In her book, Wurtzel candidly describes this sense of helplessness, "No one will ever love me, I will live and die alone, I will go nowhere fast, I will be nothing at all. Nothing will work out. The promise that on the other side of depression lies a beautiful life, one worth surviving suicide for, will have turned out wrong. It will all be a big dupe."

Such a pain-drenched description makes it easier for those on the outside to conjure feelings of sympathy. But it's usually a difficult notion to keep in mind, particularly when a sufferer's negative feelings manifest as anger or hatred. This is why Ricci knew it was important she take on this role.

"I thought, 'What's the biggest problem with depression?' It's that people who don't suffer from it can't really understand what it feels like," says Ricci. "There are huge divisions within families and between friends because it's a really hard thing to be compassionate about. And what else am I doing with my job besides trying to make people feel something they might not otherwise be able to feel?"

The film's producers had no doubt about Ricci's ability to do her job when they approached her in 2001. "She was our first choice," says Galt Niederhoffer, who had heard of the memoir while attending the author's alma mater, Harvard University, and took the first crack at transforming it into a screenplay. "Christina has a profound ability to express a huge range of emotion. And Elizabeth is an incredibly brilliant, hilarious girl—Christina has that same intelligence, wit and spunk." Still, Lizzie wasn't an easy role to play and was, in fact, almost always emotionally draining for Ricci, who was in every scene, working for two months straight and often up to 16 hours a day. All but four of those days called for some combination of crying and screaming.

"It was amazing the resources she pulled out to make that performance," says Miller. "At the very end, Christina gave a really beautiful speech about how she'd gone on this amazing journey and that she was only able to do it because she felt so supported by the crew."

But Ricci is no stranger to mental illness, which may at least partially explain the apparent ease with which she depicted such volatile emotions. She was born in Santa Monica, in 1980, where her father, Ralph, a primal-scream therapist, saw patients in his home office after she and her three older siblings were tucked in bed.

"Primal-scream therapy-that name says a lot," Ricci muses, recalling how the patients' wailings leaked through her bedroom vents. "My sister and I would imitate what we heard every night. It was weird, but funny, that as little girls we screamed obscenities and thought we were imitating a cartoon. We have a very good sense of humor in my family."

Ricci's idea of family doesn't include her father these days, who divorced her mother, Sarah, in 1995. Christina hasn't spoken to him for several years, and while she won't publicly say why, her thoughts on how children of therapists are influenced by their parents may provide a clue.

"Having someone analyze you or tell you why you're behaving in a certain way or even point out that you have a psychosis does create an unhealthy perspective for a lot of people," she says. "You're not supposed to know these things at a young age."

As a child of divorce, Ricci's life takes on parallels to Wurtzel's, whose own father was often absent after her parents' split. Ricci notes, though, that she didn't much consider these parallels when playing Lizzie: "We could have been from the same exact template of a family, but I honestly didn't analyze it that much." In fact, despite the character's direct mimicry of Wurtzel, Ricci spent only one day with the author and instead developed Lizzie predominantly from the book and her own instincts.

Fractured family trees aren't the only commonality the two women share. Ricci, too, practiced self-cutting as an adolescent. She also grappled with anorexia, an eating disorder that in one-third to one-half of sufferers is associated with depression and anxiety, according to the National Mental Health Association. And while anorexia is not something Wurtzel purportedly faced, Ricci admits that "it is definitely a manifestation of depression," hinting she also has firsthand knowledge of the mood disorder.

What Ricci won't confess to, however, is whether or not she's ever taken antidepressants, despite the press' previous assertion that she has. Here her similarity to Wurtzel—whose book title references her public association with what she wryly considered a mass dependency in the '80s-ends. At that time, Prozac and other psychotropics were still in their infancy, which made Wurtzel hesitant to rely solely on Prozac for relief. And once on it, Wurtzel worried that her evolving emotional stasis indicated a loss of self, a common concern among many psychopharmaceutical users and one not lost on the filmmakers.

"In the book itself, the Prozac side is written as an afterward," explains Miller. "The truth of the matter is Elizabeth did take Prozac and she did feel better, but it's not as simple as that. A clinical approach can help in certain cases, but we were very cautious about not making the movie an ad for Prozac or making Prozac a panacea."

Prozac Nation does well by this goal, introducing the drug with only about 20 minutes of running time remaining. It points instead to Lizzie's social support group and therapist (Anne Heche) as the main contributors to her progress in overcoming depression.

"I think this movie's intentions are good, and I certainly don't want to be irresponsible," says Ricci. "Anybody who's aware of the world around them knows that it's not all happy, that this disease is rampant. Elizabeth described depression in a way that everyone can understand, which is why the book is so powerful. I hope that with the film we're building on what she started."