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Christina Applegate has reflected on her struggles with body image and anorexia while filming the hit sitcom Married…with Children.
In an excerpt of her new memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, the 54-year-old actor recalled playing Kelly Bundy in all 11 seasons of the Fox sitcom. The program followed Kelly and her dysfunctional family in Chicago, with actor Ed O’Neill portraying her father, Al Bundy, a high school football coach turned women’s shoe salesman.
Applegate already had issues with body image and anorexia at age 15 when she started working on the show; conditions that only continued to worsen once she was in front of the camera.
“I dug myself into a hole with that character, though, because I had to be skinny. 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,” Applegate wrote in the excerpt, published by Vulture.
After a few years on the sitcom, Applegate’s character wore tight clothes, shorter skirts, and had a noticeable midriff — style that caught the studio audience’s attention.
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Christina Applegate says she dug herself ‘into a hole’ on ‘Married…with Children’ amid her anorexia (AFP via Getty Images)
“By season five, my God: I could walk into the living room, as I did in episode 13, ‘The Godfather,’ in a leather fringed jacket over a short red shirt and there would be a five-second break in the scene while the crowd hollered lustily at me,” she wrote. “I look at all this now and cringe. The show was indeed broad, and lewd, and it wouldn’t have a shot in hell of being made these days.”
However, Applegate doesn’t blame anyone on the sitcom for what she went through. Although she was always “an object for men to leer at” in the show, she wanted to wear the dresses that Kelly was known for.
“And as hard as it may be to believe, I was genuinely innocent of my effect on people. I was just a kid. I knew my self‑denial of food and my generally damaging relationship with it were all trauma‑based. I had seen altogether too much at a young age, and any sense of control and safety was passing at best,” she wrote.
She then explained how her anorexia was similar to the symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. “When someone makes me feel out of control, I have to reassert that control, and anorexia lets me do that. Like many traumatized people, I ache for control, and food is one place I’m able to achieve it,” Applegate wrote.
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Applegate (right) on ‘Married… With Children’ in 1990, aged 18 (Getty)
In the memoir, Applegate — who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021 — also opened up about her rise to fame after Married… With Children. In 1989, she was 17, and in an extended friendship group containing a “little‐known actor named Brad Pitt.” Her friendship with Pitt was always platonic, Applegate explained, “then one day I took another look at Brad and thought, hmm… Apparently, he did the same.”
However, any chance at romance got derailed when Applegate laid eyes on musician Sebastian Bach, the “long‐haired hunk” who was the frontman of mortal band Skid Row and had a one-year-old child.
“I felt so powerful and sure of myself for once that when the awards show was over, I left with Sebastian Bach, not Brad Pitt,” Applegate admitted. “I hate to put it like this, but Brad back then was still making his way as an actor, and he wasn’t yet THE Brad Pitt, the man of so many people’s dreams.”
For anyone struggling with the issues raised in this article, eating disorder charity Beat’s helpline is available 365 days a year on 0808 801 0677. NCFED offers information, resources and counseling for those suffering from eating disorders, as well as their support networks. Visit eating-disorders.org.uk or call 0845 838 2040.