Christina Ricci has "many fashion regrets".

The 41-year-old actress has recalled how she was told to dress "different" until her mid-20s, and she has several memories of being "horrified" of her ensembles, including a "wild cape and crazy make-up" combo she wore on the red carpet in the late-1990s.

The screen star wrote in an article for InStyle: ​"To this day, I have so many fashion regrets. I remember going to a premiere after a photoshoot in 1998 — I had intense make-up on and decided to wear a wild cape from Anna Sui. It must have been dark in my apartment, because when I stepped outside, my publicist said, 'Oh, no. We shouldn't have done the crazy make-up and the crazy cape.'

"At the event, other actresses tried to make me feel better by saying my look was 'kind of Bowie-esque,' which was nice. But I was still horrified."

The 'Addams Family' star is known for playing dark characters and her Goth style, and it wasn't something she found hard to shake off when she tried to be "as commercial as possible" in a bid to try and "conform" to Hollywood.

She explained: "In my mid-20s, I started wearing things that felt good. Until that point, I was told I had to be different from who I was; we weren't encouraged to be ourselves back then.

"Everyone was supposed to look the same and be less specific, so I tried to be as commercial as possible. I didn't want to appear goth since that wasn't popular in Hollywood, but that didn't work because everyone seemed to classify my style at the time as goth anyway. Today pop culture doesn't expect people to conform. If you don't want to go the route of surgery, fake teeth, and extensions, you don't have to. You can be real."

Christina always wants to make sure how she looks reflects her true authentic self, which hasn't always been easy.

She said: "It can be a struggle to show who you are through your style as you're growing up, especially when you're not 100 per cent sure of that yourself. I've played characters for work all my life, so the last thing I want to do is look like something I'm not."