REPORT CARD
STUDENT:
Italia Ricci
GRADUATED:
Sacred Heart C.H.S., 2004
BEST SUBJECT:
English
WORST SUBJECT:
Gym
CURRENT JOB:
Actress
If you want to land yourself a job in the world of acting, make sure you look good standing in the lunch queue. That, at least, is if the career of Richmond Hill actress Italia Ricci is anything to go by.
Ricci was offered her first major acting role, in the movie American Pie: The Naked Mile, after being spotted by a member of the crew at lunch on the set. Ricci was there with a friend to earn $100 as an extra and hadn’t expected to end up with a credited role in the movie.
“I guess I fell backwards into it and got very lucky,” says Ricci, who still doesn’t know why she was approached. “I was just in line getting food. I was extremely lucky.”
Ricci’s role in American Pie, playing Laura Johnson, got her noticed and she’s since appeared on such prime-time shows as How I Met Your Mother and House M.D. This fall she’ll be hitting the big screen once again in college comedy R.A. Resident Advisor.
Her career success is a dream turned reality for Ricci. Growing up in Richmond Hill, she knew she wanted to be an actress. At school she was heavily involved in theatre. “I was good at it and I always enjoyed it,” she says. Ricci now lives in Burbank, Calif., a suburban town north of Los Angeles. Though known for the many entertainment companies headquartered there, Ricci says it has the same feeling as home. (Except for the climate, obviously).
Work commitments prevent Ricci from coming back to the GTA to visit her family as much as she’d like. “Every time I book a flight, I seem to then book a job and have to cancel it [the flight],” she says. Still, when she does get home, she makes certain to pop into the 3 Coin Kitchen on Yonge, where her grandfather would take her for cappuccinos as a child.
“I was really little, so he would just get me a cup of foam with cinnamon, and I’d eat it with a spoon,” she says. “I still go there, when I visit my dentist, who is right across the street from there. I’ve been loyal to that dentist since birth, and I still fly back just for him.”
Finding time to fly back is likely to get harder for Ricci as her career continues to pick up the pace. Currently, she’s filming a role on top-rated police drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In 2013, we’ll be seeing her in Don John’s Addiction, a comedy with star-of-the-moment Joseph Gordon-Levitt. She plays J.G.L.’s love interest.
“I thought Joe would be a little scarier to work with,” she says. “But he was actually incredibly kind. It was an honour to be in a movie like that.”