Christina Ricci says Cher protected her on “Mermaids” set: 'She never wanted me to feel insecure'

"I used to hide from tutor school in her trailer eating See's — she was obsessed with the chocolate See's lollipops."

Christina Ricci was 10 years old when she filmed her first movie — and she says a powerful costar helped show her the ropes in Hollywood.

In an interview with Demi Lovato in the new documentary Child Star, the Addams Family actress reflected on filming 1990's Mermaids, her big screen debut, with Cher. "Cher took me under her wing, and she recognized that sometimes you could be on a set, and you don't know exactly what is going on behind the scenes — power struggles, or different issues," Ricci said. "And if you don't know any better, and have no experience, you can think it was your fault. And she never wanted me to feel insecure."

Ricci, who noted her own mother didn't know anything about making movies, said her onscreen mom Cher allowed her to sneak away from her academic responsibilities and eat candy. "She was great. I spent all my time with her," she said. "I used to hide from tutor school in her trailer eating See's — she was obsessed with the chocolate See's lollipops. It was the first time I had ever seen sparkling water, also. I was like, 'These rich people with their bubbly water!'"

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Lovato asked, "Was she a mentor to you?" Ricci responded, "Yeah, I was really lucky, in that when I first started, I worked with a lot of women that were very strong. They were great talents, but they were also very strong and had boundaries and had rules about how they were treated. And that's one thing that I definitely got from her."

"It was my first experience, and she was really in charge," concluded Ricci, who went on to star in The Addams Family, Addams Family Values, Casper, and Now and Then.

Lovato said she would have appreciated that kind of experience. "That's so nice that you had someone, a strong woman, to look up to on set, and that looked after you," the "Heart Attack" singer said. "I didn't have that experience. It was a man's world for me. Nobody around me really knew, 'This is what can happen to your kid.'"

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Ricci also said that she quickly realized that kids her age didn't want to hear about her time on set. "I learned really early on that I could never talk about what I did when I was away when I was back at school," she said in the documentary. "I think the first day I came back from shooting Mermaids, there were two little girls that I had been friends with, and I went to talk to them and tell them about what I had done, and they very quickly turned on me and thought I was bragging. And I just realized that it was not going to go over well, and so after that, I never spoke about it, ever."

The Yellowjackets star told Lovato that her early acting escapades served as an escape from a tumultuous home environment. "I was really unhappy in my home life, and at school, and I was really bored, and I was getting into really crazy trouble at seven [years old]," she said. "As soon as I started going on auditions every day after school with my mother, all of it stopped. All the trouble, everything."

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Acting gave Ricci an opportunity to connect with her mother. "What I really loved was getting to go with my mom on the bus to New York to the Port Authority," she said. "My mother was kept in a place in my home where she was not present. And as soon as she and I got out of the house, she had a personality. We became very close, and she would teach me about street smarts, and getting around Manhattan, and all the stuff to avoid getting killed at the Port Authority — 'cause it was 1987, so it was a really unsafe time to be at the Port Authority. So having that one-on-one attention from my mother was something that was really incredible."

Child Star, which is co-directed by Lovato, is now streaming on Hulu.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.