Christina Applegate is an American actress. Best known for her role as Kelly Bundy on the tv popular sitcom Married… with Children from 1987 to 1997. She is a breast cancer survivor and publicly promotes breast cancer awareness.
Christina Applegate has an estimated net worth of $20 million from her various TV shows and movies. Her wealth has accumulated due to her celebrity stardom and associated roles, she still has a focus on her children and her charitable work. You can find our more below.
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Childhood
Christina Applegate was born on November 25, 1971, in Los Angeles, in the US. Her father Robert William Applegate was a record producer as well as a record company executive, while her mother Nancy Lee Priddy is a singer and actress. Shortly after her birth, her parents separated. Her father married again, and through this marriage, Applegate has two half-siblings named Alisa and Kyle.
Early Life & Career
Christina Applegate acting career began at an early age. She made her TV debut in the soap opera ‘Days of Our Lives’ as a child and made her film debut at the age of seven in the film ‘Jaws of Satan’. She first gained attention for her role of a sexually promiscuous character named Kelly Bundy in the popular American TV series ‘Married… with Children’. The show aired from 1987 to 1997. Applegate won a ‘Young Artist Award’ and a ‘TV Land Award’ for her performance in the series.
Married.. with Children was a huge success and catapulted both her and Ed ONeil. It was in fact aired in front of a live audience without any laugh tracks but rather a naturally reacting environment.
Her early works on the big screen include ‘Streets’ (1990), ‘Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead’ (1991) and ‘Vibrations’ (1995). She played a supporting role in the famous 1996 sci-fi horror film ‘Mars Attack’. The film was directed by Tim Burton and was a commercial success. It also earned several awards and nominations.
Applegate’s latest hit is “Dead to me” which is about two women that meet in a support group for their grieving partners. Her character, Jen, is trying to deal with her grief while also trying to find the driver that caused the hit-and-run accident that killed her late husband. Applegate found the role appealing since she found parallels with what the character was dealing with in just managing her life while dealing with a major loss in her life. Applegate had not planned to take this role on as she thought of herself as being in semi-retirement. However, she decided to take it on and delivered a great performance where she had to show a huge range in her acting skills as the character goes from grieving, to being raged to being compassion.
Awards & Achievements
Christina Applegate has won several significant awards in her career. These include the Emmy Award for her role in the TV series ‘Friends’ in the category of ‘Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series’ in 2003. Applegate only joined for two episodes in Friends but her role was memorable to many fans. She plays Jennifer Aniston’s character Rachel’s sister who is rather obnoxious and disrespectful to Rachel’s friends. In one reoccurring theme within the episode, Applegate’s character, Amy, refuses to acknowledge the name of Phoebe. Every time when Amy refers to her incorrectly as “Emma” (Amy doesn’t realize it was her nieces name), Phoebe corrects her with “Phoebe”, in which Amy responds with “why does she keep making that sounds?”. Applegate later commented that she was surprised that Emmy as she didn’t feel like it was a huge amount of effort on her end to play the role.
She has been nominated for two Golden Globes as well for her lead roles in the shows ‘Jesse’ and ‘Samantha Who?’. She also earned a nomination for the Tony Award as well as won the World Theatre Award for her role in the musical ‘Sweet Charity’.
Sweet Charity is about a dancer who has always been looking for love and after several mishaps finally finds her match while being stuck in an elevator. Applegate played the star role which she had longed to do. Many had highlighted her passion and authenticity to the role while also brining a flavor of cuteness and perkiness which added a little bit of Applegate to the role. Unfortunately during one performance, Applegate broke her foot but still continued to perform.
Personal Life
Christina Applegate married Johnathon Schaech in 2001. The marriage was not a happy one and Schaech filed for divorce in 2005 which was a mutual decision. Schaech was also a film star who was in Tom Hank’s How to Make an American Quilt and also the movie That Thing You Do. Schaech more recently has played a series of action heros and has re-married. Applegate in 2008 became romantically involved with the alternate rock band lead Martyn LeNoble of the band Porno for Pyros which had one billboard hit called Pets. Applegate and LeNoble married in 2013 two years after they had a daughter together, Sadie Grace LeNoble, born in 2011.
Charitable work
Applegate was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, which she survived after going through a double mastectomy and by switching to a healthier diet. It was a very personal surgery for her but she’s become used to her life and her body now. Although Applegate kept the medical condition a secret, she was outed in the tabloids when someone saw her in the hospital. Since then, she has decided to advocate MRI scans and has been promoting breast cancer awareness.
As a philanthropist, Christina Applegate has been involved with several organizations such as ‘Entertainment Industry Foundation,’ ‘Adopt-A-Classroom,’ and ‘World Animal Protection’. She also founded ‘Right Action for Women’ which is a charitable foundation dedicated for combating breast cancer.
Applegate is a vegetarian and is involved with PETA and its campaign against fur. She in fact become a vegetarian at a young age. Applegate cited and incident on the set of Married.. with Children when she was given a meal with different kinds of meats and saw a plate with a pool of blood. It was that incident that caused her to become more conscious of cruelty to animals and where she realized she couldn’t eat animals any more. She’s always been an animal person and has had dogs, cats and also turtles. In 2007 Applegate posed in a revealing PETA e-card during the Christmas period to discourage shoppers to buy fur.
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