A child star who enjoyed that rare successful transition to onscreen adulthood, Christina Ricci’s continuing film presence was aided in no small part by the fact that her early roles did not depend on dimpled cuteness, but on an unnerving maturity that suggested her characters were smarter than their adult counterparts. Ricci spent her teens as a gloomy, precocious lead in Goth-tinged big budget comedies and heavier independent dramas – all of which best showcased her flair for unconventional teen females burdened by fear and identity issues. As the actress matured, she enjoyed increasing respect from the art house crowd, but had difficulty translating her persona as an intelligent, tough-talking, yet vulnerable outsider into the limited confines of Hollywood female characters.

Representing the third generation of Hustons to win an Academy Award, Anjelica Huston finally emerged from the shadows of father John and long-time beau Jack Nicholson to parlay her striking, off-beat beauty and "deep class" (as termed by Nicholson) into a career as an actress of great strength and emotional range. Though she managed to survive a disastrous starring debut in her father's "A Walk with Love and Death" (1969), the howls of nepotism that nearly ended her career before it began did cause her to withdraw temporarily from the profession.