Christina Applegate’s Brave Memoir Shares Her Story of Survival and Strength
In her new memoir, the star bravely opens up about her past struggles and her path to healing
Known for her humor, wit and beautiful smile, Christina Applegate has dazzled the world on screen for more than five decades. She has starred in both TV and film, earning an Emmy award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But behind all that success is something much darker.
In her new memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, Applegate revealed that she survived an abusive relationship, struggled with anorexia and had an abortion at age 19. She also shares what really happened between her and disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, whom she says “was definitely afraid” of her. To learn more about what Applegate reveals in her memoir, keep reading.
Christina Applegate shares that she survived an abusive relationship and childhood abuse
In her memoir, Applegate writes,“My boyfriend said I was a disgusting, self-obsessed, eating-disordered fat pig today (not in so many words). That opened my eyes a great deal…I don’t really understand my relationship anymore. It isn’t good. Sometimes I don’t think it’s worth it… I feel I have lost myself somewhere, and I can’t find her for the life of me.”
“When I look back, I realize something: He seemed to have gotten great enjoyment out of treating me like that,” she continues. “He seemed to take pleasure in making me truly believe he was going to kill me. My all-consuming fear appeared to satisfy him. I felt like he could see the terror in my face, how his anger made my body useless. It’s as if making me cry, making me feel terror, and my showing him that terror in my eyes had been enough for him. It seemed as though he had gained some power, as though that’s what he liked.”
Applegate didn’t reveal her ex-boyfriend’s name. She also didn’t share the name of her babysitter, who repeatedly abused Applegate when she was 5.
“I knew every part of it was wrong. I felt sick and scared and sad,” the actress writes. “I never fully felt comfortable being touched, and that’s true still. I’ve never felt comfortable with it my whole life, really, and all because of that girl forcing me to do something I barely understood but that I knew was shameful.”
Christina Applegate opens up about her abortion
While dating her abusive ex-boyfriend, Applegate got pregnant at age 19.
“In late April 1991, I fell pregnant. I want to turn away from what happened, but it’s all recorded in my diary,” writes Applegate. “There are moments in my life that are too painful to force into narrative or meaning, so I’ll let my voice from back then speak.”
“I always felt that if I ever got pregnant when I knew it was the wrong time, I wouldn’t have any problem having an abortion,” she continues, before sharing an excerpt from her journal. “I’m f–king pregnant and I’m killing my child on Thursday. I’m thinking where the f–k can I go to recuperate from murder.. His [the ex-boyfriend] family will hate me when they find out that I killed their family member because they don’t believe in [abortion]. But I can’t have this baby…”
Christina Applegate on her eating disorder
One of Applegate’s most well-known roles is that of Kelly Bundy in Married …With Children. According to the actress, the work put a huge amount of pressure on her, allowing Applegate’s eating disorder to develop in a very harsh and aggressive way.
“I dug myself into a hole with that character, though, because I had to be skinny,” Applegate writes. “I had a vision of the specific clothes I wanted her to wear, and to wear those clothes—clothes that would show if you ate something as tiny as a single grape—I had to lean even deeper into my eating disorder.”
“If I was going to eat something as horrendously huge as a bagel, say, I would scoop it out and maybe have half of it, or half of a half. That would be my food intake for an entire day,” Applegate continued. ”Sometimes I’d punish myself and wouldn’t eat at all. I was a size 0, and the costume people on Married …With Children would often have to take my clothes in. I was bone, bone, bone.”
Christina Applegate reveals what happened between her and Harvey Weinstein
Weinstein was one of the most popular producers in the 1990s and early 2000s, but in 2017, several women accused him of sexual assault and abuse. Applegate wasn’t one of them, but that didn’t stop her from calling out the disgraced producer in her book.
“Once, at a Miramax party, I heard [Weinstein] being lascivious about a woman as she passed by, and before I could even think, I said, ‘Oh, come on, man. That’s just gross,’” she wrote. “Weinstein just kind of looked at me, and I could tell he was thinking, ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ But at the same time, I could sense a different kind of appraisal, as though he was also thinking, ‘This chick doesn’t f-ck around.’ And he was right to be afraid of me. I did not f-ck around.”
Christina Applegate provides an update on her health
In 2021 Applegate revealed that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Now, five years later, she writes, “I wish I could say that I am a miracle. Though most days it’s very hard to believe, and in any case, I don’t want to minimize what this disease does to a human body and soul.”
“The pain I felt initially was not like it is these days,” Applegate writes. “Back then, it was more of an I‐have‐no‐strength kind of pain, rather than the often excruciating agony I’m in now…When I wake up, I often can’t get my arm to move far enough to grab the cup of water by my bed or my phone from its charger. My stomach frequently slows to a halt, leaving me to regularly rush to the emergency room in agony.”
Applegate also shared that she and her daughter Sadie, 15, didn’t talk about her illness for a while.
“For the longest time, Sadie didn’t want to talk about my illness. Even these days, if it comes up, she says, ‘It’s fine.’ It’s not fine. It has devastated her life,” Applegate writes. “MS is a disease of progression, but it’s also a disease of roller coasters. Some days I can bear to dance, others I fear the wheelchair.”
You can pick up your copy of You With the Sad Eyes now whenever books are sold.
If you or someone you know is suffering from sexual assault or violence, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline for free at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or use their 24/7 online chat service.
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