Aurora Starchild
A teary-eyed, barefooted Christina Applegate just received her own Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was her first public appearance since being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) last year.
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Christina Applegate’s Lifelong Acting Career and Grit Made Her Hollywood Star Well-Deserved
Applegate first appeared on TV at the age of 3-months-old in 1972. Her mother was an actress on Days of Our Lives and young Christina accompanied her. She’s been on screens, large and small, ever since. In 1983, she played a young Grace Kelly. But what shot Applegate to stardom was playing the daughter, Kelly Bundy, on Married… With Children. She held that role from 1987 to 1997.
After that, Applegate continued to appear in film and TV, ranging from drama to comedy. She’s been on Saturday Night Live and MADtv. She has 81 acting credits on her IMDB, including Anchorman, Mars Attacks!, The Sweetest Thing, and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
Applegate has also been on Broadway in Sweet Charity, which earned her a Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She broke her foot during the show’s run and had to convince the producers to allow her to stay rather than find a replacement.
Christina Applegate also is one of the founders of the girl group The Pussycat Dolls in Los Angeles.
Her most recent project is Dead to Me on Netflix. Applegate plays a widowed real estate agent who makes an unlikely friend named Judy. Impressively, Applegate managed to complete two seasons of the series while often confined to a wheelchair, due to her battles with MS.
The Walk of Fame Ceremony Was Applegate’s First Appearance Since MS Diagnosis
A few weeks prior to the big day, Applegate posted to Twitter that she had a “very important ceremony” coming up. She was showing her various walking sticks.
“I have a very important ceremony coming up,” she wrote. “This will be my first time out since diagnosed with MS. Walking sticks are now part of my new normal.”
At the big ceremony on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Applegate was accompanied by Married with Children co-stars Katey Sagal and David Faustino. The three actors shot to fame together and it was sweet to see Sagal and Faustino accompany Applegate.
Applegate’s Acceptance Speech Was Moving and Added a Little Humor
During her acceptance speech, Applegate was pouring tears along with gratitude.
“This day means more to me than you could possibly imagine,” she said. “I don’t say that I have friends. I have family. These people take care of me. They take care of me every day of my life and without them, I don’t know what I would do.”
Applegate then acknowledged her daughter, her eyes shaking with tears.
“The most important person in this world is my daughter,” she said. “You are so much more. You are so much more than even you know. You are so beautiful and kind and loving and smart and interesting. And I am blessed every day that I get to wake up and take you to your school and do what I— You are my everything. Thank you for standing beside me through all of this.”
At that point, Christina Applegate looks away from her daughter and gets closer to the microphone. “Oh, by the way, I have a disease,” she said. The crowd started laughing. “Did you not notice?” she asked, pointing out her bare feet.
Christina Was Barefoot on the Walk of Fame
Later on social media, Applegate took a foot selfie on her Star, explaining why she didn’t have any shoes on.
“Barefoot,” she wrote. “For some with MS the feeling of shoes may hurt or make us feel off balance. So today I was me. Barefoot.”
Christina Applegate has been very open about her MS diagnosis since announcing that she had it in August of 2021. She often posts on social media about her struggles, which range from pain to insomnia to so much more. She’s also promoted fellow actress Selma Blair, who was diagnosed with MS in 2018. Blair recently wrote an autobiography, Mean Baby, which talks about the disability.
Multiple Sclerosis is a long-lasting (chronic) disease of the central nervous system. It is thought to be an autoimmune disorder, a condition in which the body attacks itself by mistake. MS is an unpredictable disease that affects people differently. Some people with MS may have only mild symptoms. Others may lose their ability to see clearly, write, speak, or walk when communication between the brain and other parts of the body becomes disrupted.
Via Johns Hopkins Medicine
Finishing Dead to Me Was “Hardest Thing She’d Ever Done”
For Applegate, the disease has progressed in ways that would normally impede on her ability to carry out her work. However, like that time she finished a run on Broadway with a broken foot, she’s insisted on seeing her work to the finish line.
Speaking to The New York Times, Applegate said finishing Dead to Me was “the hardest thing she’d ever done.” As her body would find itself being attacked by her central nervous system in various capacities and on any given day, sometimes she couldn’t show up. But when she did, she might need to be pushed around in a wheelchair. Or someone would have to pick up her legs.
Alexis Soloski of The Times noted that blocking changes needed to be made while filming Dead to Me to accommodate Applegate’s disability. “Jen had to be the one to open doors so that she could lean against them, and there are fewer establishing shots of her walking into rooms,” she wrote. “In a terrible coincidence, much of this final season, written long before Applegate received her diagnosis, concerns illness, which made some scenes particularly hard.”
Christina Applegate Hopes People See Past the Disease, Focus on the Show
Applegate told The Times that reblocking the scenes was often “crushing.” She added that she was keenly aware of her MS diagnosis and how it has changed her.
“This is the first time anyone’s going to see me the way I am,” she said. “I put on 40 pounds; I can’t walk without a cane. I want people to know that I am very aware of all of that.”
Applegate added that regardless of whether people loved or hated the season finale, she just hoped people could see past her disease.
“I’m sure that people are going to be, like, ‘I can’t get past it,’” she said. ”But hopefully people can get past it and just enjoy the ride and say goodbye to these two girls.”
The final season of Dead to Me premieres on November 17 on Netflix.
