In an excerpt of her new memoir, You With the Sad Eyes<\/a>, 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\u2019Neill portraying her father, Al Bundy, a high school football coach turned women\u2019s shoe salesman. <\/p>\n Applegate <\/a>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.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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\u2014clothes that would show if you ate something as tiny as a single grape\u2014I had to lean even deeper into my eating disorder,\u201d Applegate<\/a> wrote in the excerpt, published by Vulture<\/a>. <\/p>\n After a few years on the sitcom, Applegate\u2019s character wore tight clothes, shorter skirts, and had a noticeable midriff \u2014 style that caught the studio audience\u2019s attention. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Christina Applegate says she dug herself \u2018into a hole\u2019 on \u2018Married…with Children\u2019 amid her anorexia (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n \u201cBy season five, my God: I could walk into the living room, as I did in episode 13, \u2018The Godfather,\u2019 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,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI look at all this now and cringe. The show was indeed broad, and lewd, and it wouldn\u2019t have a shot in hell of being made these days.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Applegate doesn\u2019t blame anyone on the sitcom for what she went through. Although she was always \u201can object for men to leer at\u201d in the show, she wanted to wear the dresses that Kelly was known for. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd 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\u2011denial of food and my generally damaging relationship with it were all trauma\u2011based. I had seen altogether too much at a young age, and any sense of control and safety was passing at best,\u201d she wrote. <\/p>\n She then explained how her anorexia was similar to the symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. \u201cWhen 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\u2019m able to achieve it,\u201d Applegate wrote. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Applegate (right) on ‘Married… With Children’ in 1990, aged 18 (Getty)<\/p>\n In the memoir, Applegate \u2014 who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021 \u2014 also opened up about her rise to fame after Married\u2026 With Children. In 1989, she was 17, and in an extended friendship group containing a \u201clittle\u2010known actor named Brad Pitt.\u201d <\/a>Her friendship with Pitt was always platonic, Applegate explained, \u201cthen one day I took another look at Brad and thought, hmm… Apparently, he did the same.\u201d<\/p>\n However, any chance at romance got derailed when Applegate laid eyes on musician Sebastian Bach, the \u201clong\u2010haired hunk\u201d who was the frontman of mortal band Skid Row and had a one-year-old child.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt so powerful and sure of myself for once that when the awards show was over, I left with Sebastian Bach, not Brad Pitt,\u201d Applegate admitted. \u201cI hate to put it like this, but Brad back then was still making his way as an actor, and he wasn\u2019t yet THE Brad Pitt, the man of so many people\u2019s dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n For anyone struggling with the issues raised in this article, eating disorder charity Beat<\/a>\u2019s 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<\/a> or call 0845 838 2040.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-502726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Christina](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1247521044.jpeg\")
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