Actress Italia Ricci on growing up in Richmond Hill, her hit tv series, and being engaged to a superhero

Italia Ricci has lived a lot of ups and downs onscreen as her character April in the ABC Family drama Chasing Life, which has just finished airing its second season.

After being diagnosed with leukemia, April has staved it off with chemo, only for it to return. She then met, fell for and married a fellow cancer patient who had his brain tumour removed. Although after their marriage, he died suddenly in his sleep. On a lighter note, she also went on a trip to Rome, as part of her goal to fulfill as many of her dreams as she can and to find inspiration for how her memoir will end.

In real life, the Richmond Hill–raised Ricci has also had to make some challenging choices in order to follow her heart when it comes to both romance and her career.

But she’s sitting pretty right now, focusing on her own upcoming wedding (to fellow actor and Torontonian Robbie Amell, who plays a superhero in the TV series The Flash) and the charity work she’s involved with through Chasing Life.

As a young child, Ricci describes herself as a bookworm. “My parents would ground me from reading,” she says over the phone from Los Angeles. “ ‘Go play outside,’ they’d tell me. ‘You’re not allowed to read anymore.’ ”

Her kindergarten teachers apparently described her as “anti-social — she has a severe lack of imagination.”

“Pretty funny, considering I now play pretend for a living,” she says, laughing.

As Ricci got older, her mother enrolled her in ballet (“She knew I needed to be onstage in some way”) and in the theatre program at the Old Town Hall in Newmarket.

She began to shine early in school, too. “In Grade 3, I was playing a tree in a production of The Little Drummer Boy that the Grade 7s and 8s were putting on. None of the older kids could remember the lines. I asked the teacher if I could try. I’d memorized all of The Little Drummer Boy lines. So I got to be the Little Drummer Boy.”

As a teenager, Ricci began to do some modelling work.

“I did, like, Hakim Optical ads. That led to music videos. It was something I did for fun, in the summer, between school years.”

She then got a role on-set as an extra for American Pie: The Naked Mile through one of her friends from school when the direct to video sequel was filming in Thornhill.

“At lunch one day, the writer came up to me and said, ‘I like your look. Would you mind auditioning for a role?’ ”

It was a small role, but it kept Ricci on-set. “By the end of the shoot, I’d become friends with the cast, writer and director. When they came back in 2007 to shoot American Pie: Beta House, they asked me to be in it.”

“So many people out there, not just those fighting cancer, connect with her. I get fan mail from people dealing with bullies, divorce and eating disorders. People see on the show that everyone keeps fighting.”

“And that movie is where Robbie [Amell] and I met — where I met a lot of my adopted L.A. family, actually. It’s the movie that changed all of our lives, but none of our careers,” she says, laughing.

Despite Hollywood calling (Amell’s manager and agent both urged her to make the move), Ricci continued her education at Queen’s University, intending to go on to law school at University of Toronto.

“I was sending tapes for auditions I’d made in my dorm room, but I didn’t have a visa to work in the States, so I started going to auditions in Toronto.”

“That’s where I landed Aaron Stone, which got me the visa. I was still planning to go to U of T for law. I’m a very calculated risk taker,” Ricci says. “But I decided to defer, and give myself a couple of years to see if I could make a living, and it’s been seven.”

“I ended up shooting my first starring role in Unnatural History in Toronto, though, which was hilarious. I moved out to L.A., got settled, and then, ‘Surprise! You’re shooting in Toronto for eight months!’ But I got to live downtown and shoot everywhere. It was really cool.”

For Ricci and her fiancé Amell, it’s the chains and fast food in Toronto that they miss most when they’re on the West Coast: Mr. Sub for her (before they got rid of their hot corned beef subs) and Harvey’s for him.

“If Robbie and I go for a week, we’ll eat Pizza Pizza, like, five or six times. And I always leave with my suitcase packed with wine gums.”

She does have a Toronto-specific favourite from her childhood. “The Three Coins Open Kitchen on Yonge Street is one of my favourite memories. I used to go there with my grandfather. He’d get a cappuccino. I’d get a cup of foam with cinnamon.”

Of her most recent role starring as April, Ricci says, “It’s the sort of show you want to watch with a bottle of wine and some tissues. She started out at 24, just got a promotion as a journalist, starting to date a guy she’s really into, and she gets diagnosed with leukemia. She has to figure out how to keep living her life while fighting this disease.”

“I enjoy playing her because she’s so fleshed out, like a real person. So many people out there — not just those fighting cancer — connect with her. I get fan mail from people dealing with bullies, divorce and eating disorders. People see on the show that everyone keeps fighting, they never lose hope, which is what grounds it.”

With the show waiting to hear if it has been picked up for a third season, Ricci has time to focus on the charity and activism work that has become a big part of her life through the show.

“I’m a Stand Up to Cancer ambassador,” she says. She also works with Stupid Cancer, L.A.’s Children’s Hospital and the American Cancer Society.

“I’m currently working with good hYOUman, a clothing company, on exclusive pieces benefiting Stand Up to Cancer, that’ll come out in the fall. I genuinely enjoy doing what I can to help who I can. I can’t do everything, but the organizations I have gotten involved with I’m very passionate about,” she says.

And of course, Ricci has a wedding to plan for some time next year. Unlike April’s televised big day, Ricci seems pretty relaxed about it.

“I’ve got the venue, I’ve got the dress [purchased at the same store her character tried hers on in], and I’ve got the guy. Everything else will fall into place.”

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