Christina Applegate has been a successful actress pretty much since she was born. But in that time,
the sitcom and film star has also had to overcome
numerous roadblocks involving her health, romance, and family.
Christina Applegate has no memory of sharing a home with both her mother and father. Her parents
split up shortly after she entered the world in 1971. Her dad, music executive and producer
Bob Applegate, went on to remarry. Christina's mother, singer and actor Nancy Priddy, raised her.
Years down the line, Christina would reconnect with her father. She said
on an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are,"
"I didn't get to spend the kind of time with him that I think either he or I would've liked."
Christina made her TV debut alongside her mom pretty much the moment she came out of the womb:
She appeared in the iconic soap opera "Days of Our Lives" the year she was born. After that,
Christina continued to pick up acting work. The actress told Backstage,
"My mom, you know, that was how we made our money, me doing radio commercials or
commercials or whatever. It's how we were fed. It's all I've ever known."
Mother and daughter would later share the screen together on several other occasions,
on "Married... with Children" and bawdy early 2000s comedy "The Sweetest Thing."
Christina Applegate's family life took another sad turn in the late 1970s,
when Nancy Priddy was diagnosed with breast cancer. Christina was only seven at the time.
Thankfully, Priddy was later given the all-clear. In fact, she's now a
two-time survivor of the disease: She also made a full recovery after it returned in the 1990s.
In a 2016 interview with People to promote her role as Gwendolyn James
in the hit raunchy comedy "Bad Moms," Applegate
acknowledged that she hadn't always been appreciative of her own mother. She said,
"I feel bad. There were times I didn't treat my
mom all that great. I had no idea how much she loved me."
It's hard to imagine anyone other than Reese Witherspoon playing the
deceptively intelligent Elle Woods in the comedy classic "Legally Blonde."
But Applegate may have gotten the role had she not been afraid of typecasting.
In a 2015 Entertainment Tonight interview, Applegate revealed that she was courted for
the bend and snap just after finishing her run on "Married…With Children":
"I got scared. I got scared of, kind of, repeating myself. What a stupid move that was."
According to the Hollywood rumor mill, Applegate apparently also auditioned to
play Rose in "Titanic," a role that famously went to the Oscar-nominated Kate Winslet.
In 2004, Christina Applegate got the chance to show off her singing and
dancing skills when she bagged the lead in a Broadway revival of "Sweet
Charity." It was a dream role for her, but it turned into a bit of a nightmare.
While playing Charity Hope Valentine in a Chicago preview of the musical,
Applegate broke her foot on stage. And the situation got worse when producers
announced they'd be closing the show as a result. Luckily, Applegate managed to
persuade them that the show must go on and, armed with a special pair of shoes,
delivered a performance that would receive a Best Actress in a Musical Tony Award nomination.
Applegate's perseverance came at a cost, though, as she explained to The Insider in 2013,
"[Broadway]'s the best thing that ever happened to me. But I actually can't
dance anymore. And that is sad for me because I always wanted to go back."
She has, however, dipped her toes back in the dancing world as a guest judge
on eight episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance."
While promoting her appearance on TLC's "Who Do
You Think You Are," Christina Applegate promised Yahoo! OMG,
"You'll cry a lot."
And she wasn't wrong. In her episode, the Laurel Canyon native set out on a quest
to discover exactly what had happened to her paternal grandmother. Bob Applegate had been
told his mom had been beaten to death outside a bar, but the exact details of her untimely
passing had never been confirmed. On further investigation, Christina discovered that the
grandma she never knew had actually died from alcohol-related cirrhosis and tuberculosis.
Upon hearing the news, Bob asked Christina whether
there was anything good to be gleaned from the revelation. She replied,
"The beauty of this is that you can be incredibly proud that you broke the pattern."
After dating stars like Brad Pitt and Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach,
Christina Applegate appeared to have settled down in 2001 when she wed actor
Jonathon Schaech in Palm Springs. Sadly, within four years, the pair decided to break it off.
Things appeared to have ended amicably between Schaech and Applegate,
and the divorce was eventually finalized in 2007. Applegate has said very little about the split,
but Schaech has had nothing but good things to say about his ex-wife. He did admit,
though, that it hit him hard at the time. He wrote in a 2020 Reddit "Ask Me Anything,"
"[B]eing raised Catholic and having parents that are still together over 50 years,
I felt I failed everyone. I thought God had given up on me."
Both parties have since found happiness, with Schaech marrying Julie Solomon in
2013 and Applegate saying "I do" to musician Martyn LeNoble in 2010.
After splitting from her first husband,
Applegate started a relationship with fisherman Lee Grivas. According to reports,
the unlikely couple was very much of the "on/off" kind. During an "off" period, tragedy struck.
In 2008, Grivas was discovered dead in his Hollywood apartment after suffering
a fatal drug overdose. According to People, the Los Angeles coroner's
office acknowledged in a statement that Grivas had a history of substance misuse.
Applegate, who began dating Grivas during her Tony
Award-nominated run in "Sweet Charity," wrote in a statement,
"I am profoundly saddened. Lee was an incredible human being who was an
extremely important and beautiful part of my life. He is missed beyond words. He touched so
many and I feel much sadness for his mother, brother and all of his family and friends.
After giving birth to daughter Sadie Grace in 2011, Christina Applegate had to spend
the next decade juggling parenthood and the demands of a Hollywood career,
most notably recurring roles in "Up All Night" and "Dead to Me," and parts in films including
"Vacation" and "Bad Moms." She also had to do all this on just three hours of sleep a night.
In 2016, Applegate told People that she'd been something of an
insomniac for two decades. But then things got worse. She said,
"When my daughter was born, I got into a three-hour feeding cycle. Now she sleeps
10 hours a night, but my body still wakes up every few hours. I'll also be up from 2 a.m. to
6 a.m. and finally fall asleep. And then [Sadie Grace] comes in and is ready for breakfast!"
Applegate added that the condition had a negative impact on several aspects of her well-being:
"It's something a lot of people don't talk about. It affects your spiritual self,
emotional self and physical self."
She advised those who suffer from insomnia to keep the room temperature in the 60s, ignore your
phone at least an hour before bedtime and, perhaps most controversially, bar pets from the bedroom.
In a 2017 chat with Self, she also advised against checking in on the news after 7 p.m. She warned,
"It's an uneasy time, so we have to give ourselves a break and try to take care of ourselves."
In 2008, an MRI revealed an abnormality in Applegate's left breast, something a
biopsy later confirmed was cancer. Though her mother had survived the disease twice,
the diagnosis still came as a surprise. Applegate recalled to Women's Health,
"Even though it ran in my family, I never in a million years thought
it would happen to me. I was scared s---less."
She also revealed that she'd demanded to learn about the test results on the
phone in the comfort of her own home rather than at the office so she could fall on the
floor and cry. But Applegate told Us Weekly that she soon managed to pick herself up:
"I was just shaking and then, also immediately, I had to go into 'take-care-of-business mode.'"
Applegate underwent a biopsy to ensure that the condition hadn't spread,
as well as a gene test to assess her risk for the cancer returning. When the latter
came back positive, Applegate opted to stop radiation treatments and have
both breasts removed. Applegate told Oprah Winfrey that she made the decision quickly.
"It just seemed like, I don't want, next year, to have to deal with this again."
Applegate had the surgery in the summer that same year. Although she has no regrets,
the star admits that she went through a grieving process.
Months after her double mastectomy,
Applegate attended the 2008 Emmys as a nominee and presenter. At the event, she told Access,
"Being here and being in a dress and feeling good, it's such a victory."
In the fourth episode of Netflix dramedy "Dead To Me," Applegate's character Jen tells Linda
Cardellini's Judy that she had a preemptive double mastectomy after losing her mom to breast cancer.
"I have a gene, so I just…I got ahead of it. I didn't want my kids to lose their mom like I did."
Of course, this was a case of art imitating life. Speaking to USA Today,
Applegate admitted that she still thinks about the experience every day. She said,
"Girls who go through this, we say to each other, 'Yep, it's been 10 years,' but you're
never not aware that that's something you've been through. Everything looks
different. You have to shower and you're like, 'Oh, there they are. That happened.'"
Applegate believes that by bringing the subject out into the open, she can help
those in a similar position feel less alone. In a Vulture interview, she noted that while
the procedure still has its detractors, she hoped to shine a light on the process.
In August 2021, Applegate disclosed on Twitter that she'd been diagnosed
with the autoimmune condition multiple sclerosis a few months earlier. She wrote,
"It's been a strange journey. It's been a tough road. But as we all know,
the road keeps going. Unless some a**hole blocks it. [...] As one of my friends that has MS said,
'We wake up and take the indicated action.' And that's what I do. So
now I ask for privacy. As I go through this thing. Thank you."
Applegate didn't reveal which friend she was referring to, but longtime pal and
"The Sweetest Thing" costar Selma Blair, who was also diagnosed with MS in 2018, wrote,
"Loving you always. Always here. As are our kids. Beating us up with love."
Applegate spent much of the following year filming the third and final season of Netflix
dramedy "Dead To Me." But the experience wasn't an easy one. Applegate told the
Los Angeles Times that she would often go to her trailer when things got too much.
"Of course, I didn't want to be around anyone or talk about it. But I had to go to work."
But the cast and crew supported her at every turn. At one point, Netflix hit pause on the whole
production so Applegate could figure out treatment and what was best for her. She told Variety,
"They actually were looking at the dailies, going, 'OK,
we need to let her go, and take care of this right now.' Because you can see the struggle,
and you can see it through the whole season. You can see that I'm in pain."
Applegate said she also found it hard to watch herself on TV once
the series dropped in late 2022, telling the LA Times,
"I gained 40 pounds because of inactivity and medications,
and I didn't look like myself, and I didn't feel like myself."
However, the showbiz veteran eventually managed to watch how everything unfolded on screen.
Over the past four decades, Applegate has racked up more
than 80 film and TV credits. But since being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,
she believes that her impressive resume is unlikely to grow significantly in the future.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Applegate hinted that the role of Jen in Netflix
dramedy "Dead to Me" may well be one of her last, and she's only in her early 50s. She said,
"Right now, I couldn't imagine getting up at 5 a.m. and spending
12 to 14 hours on a set. I don't have that in me at this moment."
In a separate chat with Variety, she suspected that it wouldn't be so
easy to find another acting job that was as flexible and accommodating as "Dead to Me."
"I'm pretty convinced that this was it,
you know? But who knows — I'm probably gonna get real bored of being in my room."
That said, while we might not be seeing Applegate as much from now on,
we may still be hearing her. She revealed that she plans to take
on a whole host of voiceover gigs and explore the world of producing.