Long before Brad Pitt became a Hollywood heartthrob, Christina Applegate famously ditched him at an awards show, leaving the future superstar bitter for years.
Christina Applegate, now 54, is revisiting her younger years in her memoir, “You with the Sad Eyes,” sharing memories of growing up and finding fame in Hollywood while also reflecting on how a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis diagnosis dramatically changed her life.
Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, a disease that has dramatically changed her mobility and forced her to step away from the acting career she had built since childhood.
With much of her life now spent at home, the Dead to Me star returned to decades of diaries while writing her memoir, confronting everything from childhood trauma and abusive relationships to the punishing standards she once imposed on her own body.
‘I was too plain’
By 15, Applegate was playing Kelly Bundy on Married… with Children, a role that turned the teenager into a sex symbol for millions of viewers.
Yet the image audiences saw on television looked nothing like the one Applegate saw in the mirror.
“For millions of Americans watching Married… with Children, I was an exemplar of female beauty, but to me, I was ‘too plain,’” she shared in her book. “I thought my face was mediocre at best. I worked on my body so hard, but I was never satisfied.”
For Applegate, the pursuit of physical perfection had followed her through some of the biggest years of her career.
“There were days when I’d go to a spin class and then work out with my trainer and then go to a dance class for two and a half more hours, always chasing the unobtainable, abusing my body in the service of a quest for perfection that was itself as damaging as any addiction,” she wrote, adding, “My sickness for perfection was always the driving force in my life.”
Depp and Pitt
Ironically, while Applegate struggled to see herself as attractive, she had already found herself surrounded by some of Hollywood’s hottest young stars.
Growing up in Los Angeles placed her in an extended social circle that included 21 Jump Street star Johnny Depp, whom Applegate admits she was “madly in love” with “for years.”
And then there was a “little-known actor named Brad Pitt,” who she reveals was her “platonic [pal] for the longest time.”
Eventually, she said, something shifted.
“One day,” Applegate said she took another look at Pitt and thought, “hmm…”
And Pitt, who was yet to reach global fame with his performance in 1991’s Thelma & Louise, did the same.
‘Long-haired hunk’ that wasn’t Pitt
Applegate, 17 at the time, ultimately decided to test that newfound chemistry by inviting Pitt, then 26, to the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, where she was scheduled to appear as a presenter.
