• Ricci Photos • Black Snake Moan review

On the sweltering Memphis set, the actress wore a bruising 40-pound chain around her waist, was submerged in an ice-filled bathtub, and spent long days crawling, screaming, and crying in a state of undress. "Christina's very open, and when she gets involved with a character, she loses herself for specific amounts of time," says Jackson. "It's easy for a director or a set of producers to realize they have an actress who's willing and able to do a lot of stuff, and they'll just turn their heads and say, 'Go ahead and do it,' rather than trying to be safe or tasteful about it. I became like her big brother in terms of what was okay for her to do physically and emotionally sometimes." After particularly intense takes, Jackson would hold Ricci and let her cry in his arms.

Patty Jenkins, who directed Ricci in Monster, had a similar reaction. "When I saw how brave she was," she says, "and what she was willing to give to other people, and I imagined her as a child, giving that to people movie after movie, set after set, I became fiercely protective of her spirit." But Ricci considers her openness just part of the job: "I let people do what they need to do to me image-wise and visually while I'm at work, because I know the difference between being at work and what I do at home. That just comes from growing up on sets, whereas if you come in as an adult, you're a little bit more guarded about who you are."

Christina Ricci and Charlize Theron in Monster.

Ricci and Brewer often discussed their personal experiences with anxiety. " 'Black Snake Moan' is a song by Blind Lemon Jefferson," says Brewer. "Being blind, he was always worried that he was hearing snakes in his room, or bugs. And so Black Snake Moan is what me and my wife have now referred to as that feeling when the anxiety would come up, and it would be this loud rage of blood just rushing past my ears." (To Jackson, however, the song means something else entirely: "It's pretty sexual," he says, "even though we use it as a song of lament in the film.")

For Rae's wardrobe — or lack thereof — Ricci pulled cowboy boots, a Wrangler jacket, and a pair of shorts from her own closet; she got the panties at Dillard's department store. "That was intentional-the white cotton panty fantasy," says the actress, who remained half-clad between takes to access the character's shame. "She has Britney Spears's hair, and she has Jessica Simpson's inappropriate wardrobe. This is just a microcosmic example of the oversexualization of young girls and children. Even though she's not really a child, she basically looks like one."

When Ricci was still a teenager, playing provocative roles in indie successes like The Opposite of Sex and Buffalo '66, she endured overheated media scrutiny of her body. One 1998 Washington Post article went so far as to praise her "tawdry voluptuousness," "pinup devil-girl curves," and "heft." "I don't worry about it anymore," says the actress, who battled anorexia in the past. "I've been around long enough that people know what the fuck I look like. My agent will pull up a picture of me blond, fat, thin, whatever. I know that had I been thinner at the time when my indie movies were hitting, I could've been in a much better position in my career, but I kind of like where I am."

Even for an offbeat indie queen, the work she's tackled in her twenties has been unusually eclectic. She's done TV (Ally McBeal, Grey's Anatomy), art house (The Man Who Cried, Monster), horror (The Gathering, Cursed), and Woody Allen (Anything Else). Two projects she starred in and produced, about disability (Pumpkin) and depression (Prozac Nation), proved critically and commercially disappointing. "At the time [Prozac Nation] came to me, one of the topics of discussion around depression was that it was such a difficult thing to describe," she says. "I felt that [Elizabeth Wurtzel's] book did it so well. We didn't really hit the mark. And then Pumpkin, I just thought it would be really funny."

Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci in Sleepy Hollow.

Like humor, the merits of restraining a woman with a padlock are subjective, and Black Snake Moan is sure to provoke some heated debate. "What I would hope is that maybe some victims [of sexual abuse] could recognize the behavior and realize that they need help the way that Rae does," says Ricci. "It's redemptive." But she's also aware that it's risqué. "I really want [the film] to be successful, because I'm proud of it, and I think I did an amazing job. And I never say good things about my own performances, because I don't want to be obnoxious. I asked my sister, and she told me I'm allowed to. But the other part of me feels like if it is successful, there will be so many people that I won't be able to look in the eye. It'll be embarrassing. You know, my brother's not allowed to see it."

Ricci has two more projects in the works, December's ensemble war drama Home of the Brave and the Reese Witherspoon-produced fairy tale Penelope, about a girl cursed with a pig's nose who must learn to love herself to overcome her affliction. "I have to say I still audition for movies," she says. "I don't really have as much control over my career as others would like to pretend that I do." As for huge commercial stardom, "I don't think that's ever going to happen for me," she states simply. "I'm five one first thing in the morning, and I tend to look really small on camera. I can probably go as far as Holly Hunter went, then I think that's going to be it. I have a feeling I am way too small."

Or maybe she's just being anxious.