Christina Applegate on Facebook.com
As a child of Hollywood, Applegate grew up to overcome toxic boyfriends, and at age 36, a double mastectomy, but she has rebuilt her life with a loving fiancé, and their cherished baby girl. On the November cover of More magazine, Christina Applegate, proves she’s no underdog. The issue hits newsstands on today.
On Applegate not seeing herself as funny: (Christina) doesn’t she see herself as funny? “I don’t,” she says.“I know that comedy is the thing I’m going to be given because that’s what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m not being called to do After the Fall. But I never think of myself as that funny person.”
On being outed with breast cancer in 2008: She {Christine} wishes her double mastectomy hadn’t been outed by the media before the anesthetic had even worn off. It happened when Applegate was still in the hospital. Though there had been a guard outside her room, doctor’s ordered required that she “start walking right away. I was walking with my little IV drip thing, in my little robe. My friend said he saw someone take a picture of me. The next day I got a call from my publicist, who said, ‘It’s out.’ ” Still groggy from medication, Applegate sat down to draft a statement.
How Her Life came crashing down in 2008/Death of her Boyfriend: During her Tony-nominated New York run in Sweet Charity, a friend introduced her to deep-sea fisherman and aspiring photographer Lee Grivas. Living together in L.A., they had a relationship that was stormy at best. “We had been apart for a couple of months because of his drug addiction. During that time, I found out I had cancer—when that relationship was dissolving.” She broke it off to work on saving herself. On July 1, 2008, Grivas was found dead in his apartment of an overdose. Nonetheless, 2008 was the worst: “Both of my cats died right after I found out I had cancer. The cats and the boyfriend died, all within three months. I laugh but . . . oh my God.”
On overcoming her “Total Emotional Collapse:” “The good thing is that we got the information out, but talking about the facts of the disease, I didn’t have to see what was going on with me. I think when it slowed down, all of that came crashing down.” Applegate overcame what she calls a “total emotional collapse” with the support of family, close friends and her spiritual adviser from the church she turned to during her mother’s cancer recurrence. Most of her healing was done quietly, at home.
On missing her “Exquisite Breasts”: “I had two lumpectomies, and I was supposed to start radiation. Then I found out I had the gene [the BRCA1 gene mutation that increases risk and recurrence of breast and ovarian cancers], and my decision was to undergo the prophylactic double mastectomy.” She smiles as she recites a line from Anchorman, in which her character Veronica Corningstone asks newsroom letch Fred Willard if he plans to deprive her of a spot on his news show “because I have breasts? Exquisite breasts?” Applegate appreciates the artistry of her reconstructed versions, which she got a few days before her 37th birthday. Nonetheless . .. “Aw, I miss my exquisite breasts sometimes,” she says.
Growing up surrounded by teen heart throbs: In the Bundy years, Applegate brought home plenty of boy pals from the studio, nice guys just breaking into the business on Fox throb-a-thons like Beverly Hills 90210. Johnny Depp, then starring in 21 Jump Street, was an early friend. “Brad Pitt used to come up, and Jason Priestley. We’d do barbecues,” Applegate’s mother, singer-actress, Nancy Priddy says.
Applegate’s TV dad, Ed O’Neill (now starring in Modern Family), on her questionable boyfriends:
“We all went through her having boyfriends that were rather questionable. I would say, ‘Hey, you need a hand with these guys?’ She had a propensity for taking guys in that really weren’t on her financial level. She’d just take care of them, nurture and encourage them.”
On reprising her role in the Anchorman sequel: “Bring it on,” says Applegate—she’s happy to have been asked back. “The female role is oftentimes interchangeable or expendable in a man flick,” she says. “I’m glad they recognized I was a part of that team.”
On her fiance Martyn LeNoble: “We had always cared deeply for one another when we were friends. And he came and put me under his wing. That was it—he was supposed to come.”
On her daughter’s defiance and having more children: Her daughter, Sadie, will be two in January, and the household dynamic is already getting wiggy. Lately they have been in deep huddles about Sadie’s new willful mode. “We don’t know the best thing to do,” Applegate confesses. “She’s starting to get really defiant when we say no and look back at us with an evil look in her eye.“. They would like to have a second child, she says, but “because of some things that happened during my pregnancy, I don’t know.”
On her Bad Stepdad: “Bad step-dad,” she says. “From three to seven, I had a stepfather who caused a lot of damage to my mother and to me.”
On growing up in a slightly hippie atmosphere: “I’ve never lived more than five minutes from where I grew up,” she says. She was 24 when she bought her house— located, like her childhood home, in Laurel Canyon—with her earnings from her role as Kelly Bundy … {when she was growing up}, “All the moms kind of let us do whatever we wanted to do. There weren’t a lot of rules, but there was a lot of mutual respect. I always made sure she knew where I was, and I would always be home by a reasonable hour.”
On laying down the law: “There was to be no stress in this house. The heart rate had to stay even, and don’t piss me off. I didn’t want to feel my blood pressure go up. I still had cancer, and I didn’t want to accelerate cell growth. I just wanted to stay calm. I think for the most part I’ve kept that philosophy.”
On not doing anger: I don’t do anger,” she says. “It makes no sense to me to hold grudges or pine over things. Or over-analyze.”
Celeb Friends (Maya Rudolph and Stevie Nicks) and her mother comment on Applegate:
Rudolph, co-star of Up All Night: “Christina’s sense of humor is such a strong voice that I can hear it in a text message or an e-mail. It’s really dry. She’s got a Pinot Grigio sense of humor.
From her new friend, Stevie Nicks: “Christina is that girl next door you really would love to know, really sweet and smart and dear. She is one of my favorite people in the whole world.”
