Long before Brad Pitt became a Hollywood heartthrob, Christina Applegate famously ditched him at an awards show, leaving the future superstar bitter for years.
Christina Applegate, now 54, is revisiting her younger years in her memoir, “You with the Sad Eyes,” sharing memories of growing up and finding fame in Hollywood while also reflecting on how a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis diagnosis dramatically changed her life.
Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, a disease that has dramatically changed her mobility and forced her to step away from the acting career she had built since childhood.
With much of her life now spent at home, the Dead to Me star returned to decades of diaries while writing her memoir, confronting everything from childhood trauma and abusive relationships to the punishing standards she once imposed on her own body.
‘I was too plain’
By 15, Applegate was playing Kelly Bundy on Married… with Children, a role that turned the teenager into a sex symbol for millions of viewers.
Yet the image audiences saw on television looked nothing like the one Applegate saw in the mirror.
“For millions of Americans watching Married… with Children, I was an exemplar of female beauty, but to me, I was ‘too plain,’” she shared in her book. “I thought my face was mediocre at best. I worked on my body so hard, but I was never satisfied.”
For Applegate, the pursuit of physical perfection had followed her through some of the biggest years of her career.
“There were days when I’d go to a spin class and then work out with my trainer and then go to a dance class for two and a half more hours, always chasing the unobtainable, abusing my body in the service of a quest for perfection that was itself as damaging as any addiction,” she wrote, adding, “My sickness for perfection was always the driving force in my life.”
Depp and Pitt
Ironically, while Applegate struggled to see herself as attractive, she had already found herself surrounded by some of Hollywood’s hottest young stars.
Growing up in Los Angeles placed her in an extended social circle that included 21 Jump Street star Johnny Depp, whom Applegate admits she was “madly in love” with “for years.”
And then there was a “little-known actor named Brad Pitt,” who she reveals was her “platonic [pal] for the longest time.”
Eventually, she said, something shifted.
“One day,” Applegate said she took another look at Pitt and thought, “hmm…”
And Pitt, who was yet to reach global fame with his performance in 1991’s Thelma & Louise, did the same.
‘Long-haired hunk’ that wasn’t Pitt
Applegate, 17 at the time, ultimately decided to test that newfound chemistry by inviting Pitt, then 26, to the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, where she was scheduled to appear as a presenter.
Since she needed to arrive early, Pitt offered to pick up her mother, actress Nancy Priddy, before joining Applegate at the ceremony.
That night, Applegate recalls feeling unusually confident in a Ceil Chapman gown that made her feel “incredible” – but Pitt wasn’t the only man who had her attention.
Somewhere in the crowd, another man with a mane of blond hair immediately caught Applegate’s attention.
Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach, whom Applegate remembers as a “long-haired hunk,” had been on her radar throughout the night, and by the time the awards were over, whatever spark had briefly developed between her and Pitt was about to suffer a rather brutal ending.
“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 wrote.
‘Wasn’t yet THE Brad Pitt’
In her book, the Anchorman star also acknowledges that her decision to ditch Pitt looks very different with decades of hindsight.
“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,” she shared.
And Pitt was apparently not thrilled about being abandoned.
With Applegate gone, the star of Fight Club “was left to sullenly drive” her mother home, and on that journey, he “almost got into a fight with a bunch of gang members, and, not surprisingly, was subsequently very mad at me.”
The girl who ditched Pitt
“We didn’t talk for many years after that,” Applegate wrote, adding that Pitt hadn’t forgotten the humiliation.
“Much later, but at different times, two of his movie star girlfriends asked me if it was true that I was the girl who left Brad behind at the MTV Video Music Awards. Brad had apparently told both of them separately that he was still mad at me,” she wrote.
Decades later, however, Applegate and Pitt were finally able to put their disastrous MTV date behind them.
“Eventually, we agreed that I’d been a kid, and though he’d deserved much better, it was time to forgive the child who dumped him for the lead singer of Skid Row.”
And Applegate couldn’t resist one final observation about how things turned out.
“Of course, Brad is now THE Brad Pitt, and Sebastian Bach… well, he still has long hair, I guess.”
No doubt, Christina Applegate will forever be remembered as the woman who ditched Brad Pitt! What do you think about this story? Please let us know your thoughts and then share this story so we can hear from others!
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