Table of Contents
Christina Applegate Reveals the Real Reason Why She Dumped Brad Pitt for Sebastian Bach
Christina Applegate has recollected her past relationship with Brad Pitt and disclosed the reason why she abruptly deserted him during their date.
Though The Dead to Me star, at 54, pens down in her memoir You with the Sad Eyes, that she was close to naysaying the sitcom role that turned her into a star, because “I hated Kelly Bundy.”
Through the unbelievable success of the show, she was presented to the opportunity to be a presenter at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards and invited Pitt, who was 26 then and part of her LA posse — which also consisted of Johnny Depp, whom Applegate admits she was “in love with for years.”
Applegate discloses that at the time of her Married… with Children fame, she dumped Pitt for Skid Row rocker Sebastian Bach as she reveals in detail the dark side of her sunny Hollywood persona.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2)/brad-pitt-christina-applegate-1-030326-e83307ad1fbd47369f7fcfcc5eb0567c.jpg)
Christina Applegate Recalls Dumping Brad Pitt for Sebastian Bach
Christina Applegate revisits the throwback story of dumping Brad Pitt at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards. She admits that the reason was that she was more attracted to a rock star than to Brad Pitt at the time.
According to her memoir You with the Sad Eyes, the actress was “staring at Bach, who was then a long-haired hunk fronting the band Skid Row” all night long. Brad Pitt was 26 years old and an up-and-coming actor, while Applegate was 17 at that time.
“I hate to say it like this, but Brad was still struggling as an actor and hadn’t become THE Brad Pitt yet,” she says.
Christina admits things got worse after Brad was left to drive her mother home. She found out later that he was very mad at her, and the two of them didn’t talk for years. She also felt sorry for her choice after learning that Bach had a partner and a young child.
Later on, Christina reveals that two of Brad’s actress girlfriends asked if she was “the girl” who left him at the awards show, which implied that Pitt was still upset about it.
Christina Applegate Reflects on Past and Body Image Issues
Christina Applegate is revealing more of her history and stopping in time to observe the body-image issues she experienced when she was a young actress.
In her memoir You with the Sad Eyes, Applegate reveals that she and Brad Pitt at some point agreed that she was only a youngster when she left him to go with Skid Row vocalist Sebastian Bach. “Eventually, we agreed that I’d been a kid, and, although he was totally deserving of someone better, we decided to forgive the little girl who left him for the lead singer of Skid Row,” she narrates.
Applegate also mocks in a way the two men’s present lives: “Naturally, Brad is THE Brad Pitt now, and Sebastian Bach … well, he still has long hair, I imagine.”
Even though the actress began her acting career at the age of 5 to help with paying the bills, she is still very honest about the body-image struggles that she had as a young girl. She says that her mother, Nancy Priddy, even talked about doing liposuction on her teenager’s thighs.
The situation worsened while she was on Married… with Children, as her character Kelly Bundy was famous for wearing lingerie-style, very tight clothes. Applegate remembers that she exercised for long hours and starved herself so that she could fit into Kelly’s Lycra dresses.
Christina Applegate Opens Up About Feeling “Too Plain” when She Was Famous
Christina Applegate reveals that even when she was very famous for Married… with Children, she was very unhappy about how she looked.
“Even after I seduced a then-famous rock star and ditched Brad Pitt at an after-party… it still wouldn’t have convinced me that I was an attractive person,” she writes in her memoir You with the Sad Eyes.
Millions of fans saw her as a very attractive lady but she discloses that she felt “too plain” and even considered her face “mediocre at best.” She talks about pushing her body to its limits—going to spin class, exercising with a personal trainer, and taking multiple dance classes in one day—”always chasing something I couldn’t get.”
“I have always been obsessed with perfection and that has been my main motivation throughout my life,” she confesses.
Though Kelly Bundy being a sex symbol was a big part of the pressure, Applegate reveals she doesn’t hold the show responsible. “I wrote that it was me who decided to wear those Kelly Bundy dresses in order to say something about the culture,” she states.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/gettyimages-482734762-2000-fe5426a7274a44848ad8997424b84f1e.jpg)
Christina Applegate ’reinvented’ Kelly Bundy as a “full rock slut,” she says
Christina Applegate says Kelly Bundy was initially envisioned as a “hard biker chick” — story changes after she got ideas from the 1988 music documentary The Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years.
She remembers a scene in the movie of a beauty contest for strippers all dressed in Lycra with teased hair, and the atmosphere totally controlled by the groupies; that’s when she realized who Kelly was.
“And Kelly Bundy was reborn,” she writes in her memoir You with the Sad Eyes, “as a full rock slut.”
Anyway, Applegate says she deliberately portrayed Kelly as a virgin even though the character was very sexually styled. “She was simply a product of the time, the era of MTV music videos,” she says, resisting the critics. “I have been told that I just played a whore. Not true.”
Came out of a couple of weeks of romance with Red Hot Chili Peppers lead singer Anthony Kiedis when she was 17 and… playing on the tv show Married… with Children.
Christina Applegate Opens Up About Toxic Relationships and Abuse
Christina Applegate also reveals her authentic self when she talks about her early dating life and the realization of the dangerous path she was on.
She had a short romance with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman, Anthony Kiedis when she was 17 and reminisces about a farmers market date where her mother joining them for a sandwich. Applegate narrates that Kiedis told her he never used deodorant, jokingly saying, “A horse will know me before they will know you.” She says he later dumped her — but strangely asked her to do his laundry. “And like a stupid f–king fan I did it,” she admits.
Applegate confesses that her diaries “almost endlessly detail the problems I had with the men I chose to date,” as she admits to falling for “a–holes” and “f–kups” she thought she could “fix.”
The most hurtful and damaging thing that Applegate describes being involved in was a relationship with a man who she says abused her physically and emotionally over the years. He controlled every aspect of her life, including what she wore and ate. After 1991, when she was pregnant, she decided to have an abortion. She finally left the abuser after a particularly abusive incident when he allegedly hurled a lighter at her and forced her to swallow tequila.
Christina Applegate Talks About Her Marriage to Martyn Lenoble and Past
Christina Applegate is revealing a bit more about her life and the struggles she had to deal with, among them her diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis.
In her book You with the Sad Eyes, Applegate reveals that she has wondered on a few occasions whether the abuse her body suffered during her time as a young actress was a factor in her getting MS in 2021.
Besides that, she also thinks back to relationships from her past, among them her marriage to actor Johnathon Schaech in 2001. On a wedding day, Applegate confesses, she knew that he was not the right man for her and the marriage ended in 2005.
Right after the split, Applegate was seeing photographer Lee Grivas. She was already deeply involved with Dutch musician Martyn Lenoble, of Porno for Pyros, when she heard that Grivas overdosed on drugs.
The two, Applegate and Martyn, got married in 2013 and have a daughter, Sadie, age 15. The actress says that through all her health-related issues, the husband was the one who never left her side.
Christina Applegate Reveals Her Fight Against Cancer, MS and the Decision to Stop Being Perfect
Among other things, Christina Applegate’s memoir has health as a theme. One of those occasions when she was diagnosed with cancer was in 2008 during the shoot of Samantha Who. She deliberately went through the double mastectomy procedure and confessed she was under the impression that she was ”cursed” at that time.
Currently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a condition she was diagnosed with in 2021, Applegate lays bare the damaging effects of the illness. She shares that her disease has, on occasion, made her bedridden and totally reliant on help, and therefore it is very difficult for her to give her daughter, Sadie, all her love and attention.
“Up until recently, I have felt for so long that the problems are there, therefore the good is to come,” she eloquently expresses. “I am done with lies. I am done with being the good girl and I am done with saying that any of this is a blessing.”
However, Applegate has a new appreciation of herself. “I want to reach that little girl inside of me that was so obsessed with being perfect. Maybe that is the reason I am writing this book.”
