Her next major role was in John Waters follow up to Hairspray, Cry-Baby (1990). She starred alongside Johnny Depp and Traci Lords in a gang of delinquents who help Cry-Baby Walker (Depp) fight for the woman he loves (Amy Locane). The movie was made by Universal and opened in April 1990 to disappointing box office takings. Ricki's next major role was in Where The Day Takes You (1992), again taking on a very similar streetwise role. The movie opened in September 1992 and despite starring sitcom superstar Will Smith the movie bombed big time!
Over the next few months Ricki shed 125lbs and soon landed her own syndicated talk show, Ricki Lake (1993). During that time Ricki also managed to film a horror movie, Skinner (1993), which also starred Traci Lords and Ted Raimi. The movie was a low budget gore spectacular but remained unreleased until 1995 when it went straight to video. Ricki also began work on Serial Mom (1994) in late 1993 starring alongside Kathleen Turner who played her serial killing mother. The film was a commercial failure barely making back half it's budget but it got rave reviews and has gone on to do well on TV as well as video and DVD and has become somewhat of a cult favorite.
Ricki's biggest moment in the movie business was arguably Mrs. Winterbourne (1996) in which she played the lead alongside Shirley McLaine and Brendan Fraser. Again, the box office figures where pretty bad for such a high budget movie barely making $10m back of a $25m budget. After Mrs. Winterbourne the offers dried up and Ricki stuck to her highly successful talk show. She now has two children and has recently filed for divorce against her husband. Ricki has also appeared in John Waters' Cecil B. Demented (2000) as Melanie Griffith's long suffering PA and had a small recurring role in the his US sitcom King Of Queens (2000). Her talk show, Ricki Lake (1993) will wrap it's final season in summer 2004.
