Christina Applegate reveals how she ditched Brad Pitt for Skid Row rocker Sebastian Bach at the height of her “married…with kids” fame, and details the dark truth behind Hollywood’s sunny persona.
The beloved star, now 54, admits in her new memoir, Sad Eyes, that she almost didn’t take on the role on the sitcom that made her a star because “I hated Kelly Bundy.”
After the show became a hit, she was asked to present the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards and invited Pitt, then 26 and a member of the Los Angeles fraternity. That includes Johnny Depp, whom Applegate admits she has been “in love with for years.”
But that night, she only had eyes for the “18 and Life” singer.
“I spent all night staring at Bach, a huge, long-haired guy who was then the frontman of a band called Skid Row,” Applegate, then 17, wrote. “I hate to say it this way, but at the time Brad was just starting out as an actor and had yet to become the Brad Pitt that many people dream of becoming.”
“And then things got even worse. Brad ended up driving my mom home in a bad mood. Apparently, at a gas station on the way, Brad almost got into a fight with some gang members and then, understandably, got very angry with me.”
She regretted her decision as soon as she learned that Mr. Bach already had a one-year-old child with his long-term partner.
Pitt, on the other hand, “didn’t speak” to her for “years.”
Applegate recalled, “Long afterward…two of[Pitt’s]movie star girlfriends asked me if it was true that I was the girl who left Brad at the MTV Video Music Awards. Brad apparently told them both separately that he was still mad at me.”
“In the end, we both agreed that we were kids. He deserved better, but it was time to forgive the kid who abandoned him as the lead singer of Skid Row.”
she said jokingly. “Of course Brad is now The Brad Pitt, Sebastian Bach…well, he’ll still have long hair.”
Applegate, who began acting at the age of five to earn a living, has been open about her body image issues, which began at an early age. She writes that when she was a teenager, her mother, Nancy Priddy, suggested liposuction to her thighs.
Kelly Bundy’s character was known for her skimpy, skintight, rocker-chick outfits, so things escalated even further when she appeared on “Married…”. Applegate worked out for hours and went without food to wear Kelly’s Lycra dress.
“My ability to catch the attention of famous rock stars of the time and outmaneuver the likes of Brad Pitt at after-parties still didn’t convince me I was an attractive person,” she writes.
“For millions of Americans watching ‘Married with Children,’ I was a paragon of female beauty, but for me it was ‘too plain,'” she says. I worked hard to get fit, but I was never satisfied. There were days when I would go to spin classes, work out with a trainer, and then go to a dance class for two and a half hours, constantly chasing the unobtainable, and overworking my body in the pursuit of perfection, which in itself was as harmful as any other addiction.
“The desire for perfection has always been the driving force in my life.”
But Starr doesn’t blame the show.
“Sure, it was always part of the show for me to be the object of prying eyes, but I was the one who wanted to wear that Kelly Bundy dress to represent something in the zeitgeist,” she wrote.
In fact, Kelly was originally supposed to be a “tough biker chick,” but everything changed after Applegate saw a screening of the now-classic documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years.” It includes a beauty pageant with strippers wearing “Lycra dresses, hair up, super big, all curly, like groupies.”
Regarding her future plans, the winner said, “I would like to continue working as a model and, if possible, continue my acting career.”
And Kelly Bundy was reborn “as a complete rock woman,” Applegate writes.
But she also performed as a virgin, even though viewers were totally into it.
“She was a product of the MTV music videos of the time, featuring women wearing too-tight corsets and doing weird things to guys with curly hair,” the actress writes. “People say I just played a prostitute, but that’s not true.”
In real life, Applegate “briefly” dated Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis when she was 17 and appearing on Married With Children.
They went on a date at a farmers market, where her mother also joined them for sandwiches, but Kiedis delighted her with the fact that he never wore deodorant. “The horse will know me before it knows you,” he told her.
“Then Anthony dumped me, and right after that he said, ‘Hey, can you do my laundry for me?’ And like a stupid fucking fan, I did it,” Applegate writes.
Ms. Applegate’s diary contains a “nearly endless list of problems with the men I have chosen,” she said, noting that the ones she thought she could solve were “terrible” and “terrible.”
She had a long relationship with a man, who is not named in the book, who subjected her to years of physical and emotional abuse, including controlling what she wore and what she ate.
Her mother begged her to “keep that man away from him.” And Ed O’Neill, who played father Al on the show, “hated” the boyfriend so much that he thought the actor might hit him.
Applegate had an abortion after becoming pregnant by her boyfriend in April 1991. After a fight in which her boyfriend threw a lighter at her and poured a bottle of tequila down her throat, she finally kicked him out of her Laurel Canyon home.
In her memoir, Applegate believes that the abuse she suffered may have contributed to her battle with multiple sclerosis in 2021.
She went on to date a series of men before marrying actor Jonathan Sheck in 2001, but Applegate wrote that she knew at the time of her wedding that he was not the one she was meant to be with.
After their split in 2005, she dated photographer Lee Grivas, and just as she began a new romance with Dutch musician Martin Lenoble of Porno for Pyros, she learned that Grivas had died of a drug overdose. She and Lenoble married in 2013 and now have a 15-year-old daughter, Sadie.
Applegate was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 while working on the comedy Samantha Who, and underwent a double mastectomy amid fears she was “cursed”.
Applegate hates not being able to be as close to Sadie as she would like during her battle with MS, which has left her bedridden and in diapers, but says, “For a long time in life, there are good things underneath all the bad things.” Something strange has happened. I’m not used to it. I can’t lie anymore, I’m a good girl, and I say it’s all a blessing, but pieces of self-understanding continue to emerge.” I fell in love with the story of the past 50 years or so.
“I want to talk to that little girl who always thought she had to be perfect. Maybe that’s what this book is about.”
