The Professional’ for a Ridiculous Reason

Christina Ricci has been an accomplished actress and has starred in several popular films and series since her big screen debut in Mermaids (1990). But one role she missed out on was that of Mathilda in the classic 1994 film, Léon: The Professional, losing out to Natalie Portman. And in a new interview with the YouTube show, First We Feast (via The Wrap), Ricci reveals the ridiculous reason why: she was “too common and healthy looking.”

That may come as a surprise to some, considering one of Ricci’s most famous roles was the rather gothic Wednesday Addams in the early 1990s hit film, The Addams Family and its sequel. She explained to her Yellowjackets co-star Melanie Lynskey why she lost out on her “dream role:”

“I really wanted to be in ‘Léon: The Professional,’ but I was too common and healthy-looking. What a time to be twelve.”

Léon: The Professional, of course, helped launch the career of Portman, and boosted the status of writer / director Luc Besson following La Femme Nikita (1990). The movie follows Mathilda, who is taken in by Léon (Jean Reno), a professional assassin, after her family is murdered. They form a tight bond, and she starts to learn the trade of murder-for-hire.

Ricci went on to star in the hit family film, Casper (1995), along with co-starring in The Ice Storm (1997), Buffalo 66 (1998), Sleepy Hollow (1999), and several other movies and shows over the last 30-plus years.

Christina Ricci Has Been in Several Recent and High-Profile Shows and Movies

Over the last decade, Ricci has starred in several high-profile series and movies, including Z: The Beginning of Everything (2015); The Matrix Resurrections (2021); voicing two popular DC characters, Harley in Harley Quinn & The Joker: Sound Mind (podcast series, 2023) and Catwoman in Batman: Caped Crusader (2024); and several other projects.

But her two recent series have been some of the most popular of her career: Yellowjackets and Wednesday, the Netflix show based on The Addams Family. In the latter, she appeared as Marilyn Thornhill, the dorm mom and botanical sciences teacher to Wednesday and Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) at Nevermore Academy. In the first season of Wednesday, we learn Marilyn is actually Laurel Gates and ends up being one of the primary villains on the show. She is not slated to return for Season 2.

Season 3 of Yellowjackets premiered last month and Ricci plays Misty, who survived a plane crash in 1996 with her fellow high school soccer teammates, and was stuck in the Canadian wilderness for 19 months. The show cuts back-and-forth between 1996 and the modern day, as both the teenagers deal with their situation and the adult versions cope with how it affected them.

The series is inspired by Lord of the Flies by William Golding and the Uruguay rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes. It’s quite dark and touches upon themes such as good and evil, survival, trauma, and even cannibalism. Yellowjackets has been nominated for multiple awards since it debuted in 2021, including a Primetime Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for Ricci. It currently holds a 93% critical and 60% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Source: First We Feast (via The Wrap)