Christina Ricci cast herself as a romantic lead in ‘Z: The Beginning of Everything’ because it wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
The 36-year-old actress – who stars as Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald in the new period drama on Amazon – has revealed she created the part for herself in the TV show because she doesn’t typically "fall into that category".
She explained: "I would never have been cast in this part, ever, because people just don’t see me as a romantic lead.
"I just don’t fall into that category. So I just created the part myself."
But Christina admitted she doesn’t really know why she’s never been cast as a romantic lead earlier in her career.
She told the Radio Times: "I couldn’t tell you why … Possibly with love stories, there’s a lot more suspension of disbelief than with other stories and perhaps it’s that I don’t buy into it myself."
Christina also revealed she started writing her own projects because she "can’t just whinge and moan about things".
Christina’s new series is based on Therese Fowler’s novel ‘Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald’.
The actress felt inspired by the book about Zelda, wife of the iconic author F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so she decided to pitch the idea to Amazon.
She explained: "It’s interesting, for such a rich story with two famous, glamorous people, that it’s never been made.
"And I think it provoked a little bit of my sense of injustice. It’s bizarre that with two people, both so famous, we know all about one person (Fitzgerald) and only horrible things about the other (Zelda, who is best known for her mental illness)."
Meanwhile, Christina recently confessed she "played a lot of mental games" with herself when she was younger in a bid to cope with her own success.
The ‘Addams Family’ star said: "It’s such an unnatural state and something that happens to so few people, that I don’t know how anyone could tell another person how to handle it.
"I played a lot of mental games with myself when I was a child to not feel the pressure of it or the strangeness of it all the time. I think it’s nearly impossible unless you’re really good at ignoring everything else."
Christina Ricci ‘isn’t seen as a romantic lead’
