“Really, I feel most at home in a hotel”

“If I could live in a hotel for the rest of my life, I would,” says Christina Ricci. The actor and producer’s easy comfort with staying at hotels for long stretches of time goes back to her early days as a child actor. “My first long stay was for Mermaids [when I was 9] and my mother and I stayed at The Charles Hotel in Boston, right over the Charles River—I loved it so much,” she recalls. “I have this vivid memory of a hamster I had, Princess Pearly Pat, and I would walk her down the hallways in one of those hamster balls,” she says. “That was really fun, and they had a really great pool that I was so excited about—an indoor pool was really fancy at that time.”

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Since then, the actress and producer, best known for her breakout role as the wonderfully droll, dark-edged Wednesday Addams, has taken on increasingly complex roles, from The Ice Storm, Sleepy Hollow, and Monster to her latest cannibal horror series Yellowjackets, now in its second season on Showtime. As she evolved over the years as an actor, and as a person, her choice in hotels has kept pace, often reflecting the creative space she seems to occupy at the time.

“In my 20s, I used to stay at the Chelsea, when it was half a residence, half a hotel,” she says, recalling nights spent at the raffish New York legend, during a time she often refers to as her “nihilistic” period. “And the Chelsea was, you know, not so nice; it was like an adventure in romantic seediness.” But as Ricci grew up, so did New York’s storied artists’ hangout: It re-opened last year after an 11-year, multimillion-dollar renovation. “One of my best friends came to visit me when I was staying there and we were just in awe at how beautiful that hotel is now and how funny it was to be back there but now as fancy adults in a fancy hotel,” she says.

But at the core of it, what Ricci loves most about hotels hasn’t changed. As a child, some of her top hotel memories revolve around the creature comforts that make hotel stays so special, ones that are accessible on almost any budget. “When I was a kid, I used to really love the bathrobes, even though they didn’t fit me; and the little pre-order breakfast thing you hang on your door,” she says. Those simple comforts are just as important to her today: “There’s nothing better to me than sitting in bed with a movie on, room service, trays on the bed… That’s just the greatest.”

Martina Sheehan

Writer

Martina Sheehan is a Chicago-based travel writer-editor who has written for the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Budget Travel, Forbes Travel Guides, and Time Out guidebooks, among others. She has traveled to 38 countries and 46 states, and never leaves home without a good map app, a themed playlist, and her daughter.