Christina Applegate starred ahead, her eyes unblinking and wide.
It was August 2015. The American actress was a guest on a popular live-to-air talkshow when a question took her by surprised. It was a about Hollywood star, Brad Pitt.
It’s a question that has followed Applegate her since one particularly night in 1989.
Take a look back at the Dead To Me star’s famous dalliances and her one true love.
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In the late 1980s, Applegate was a TV ‘it’ girl, after being cast on the hugely popular US sitcom Married… With Children at just 15.
Applegate played the part of Kelly Bundy, the brash, rebellious teenager daughter to parents Ted (Ed O’Neil) and Peggy (Katy Sagal). She show lasted 11 seasons.
It was a breakout role that opened doors for the actress.
Big screen opportunities followed, in the 90s teen classic Don’t Tell Mum the Babysitter’s Dead, Wild Bill, Mars Attacks! and the lead role in TV series Jessie.
With her star on the rise, success came with interest in Applegate off camera. Her private life soon became fodder for the gossip magazines.
There was one persistent rumour that she and fellow 90s teen star Christian Slater once dated. They have not.
The one story that has Applegate cannot seem to shake is her romance with Pitt.
The pair were linked in 1988 after being photographed playfully embracing at an Amnesty International event. Applegate was 17.
Then they appeared to be each other’s date for the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards.
Yet, while the pair walked into the awards together, they did not walked out together.
Applegate has never revealed who she left the awards with that night.
During an appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Applegate did her best to avoid answering the question about that night with Pitt.
She declined to comment to Cohen’s questions.
She did reveal, in a non-verbal ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the TV host’s questions that the man she did leave with that night was not an actor and that they did not end up together.
She shared that and Pitt also did not date again.
Sebastian Bach, the then singer of rock band Skid Row, later outed himself as the ‘other man’.
“Well, [what happened between me and Christina] was a brief fling, but we did go out a couple of times,” Bach told Elliot In The Morning in 2016.
“She was interviewed recently on Entertainment Tonight or something, and they asked, ‘What was the dumbest thing you ever did?’
”And she goes, ‘One night I ditched Brad Pitt for this other dude.’
“And that dude would be me.”
Applegate met her first big love in Johnathon Schaech in 1997.
They were together for four years before they tied the knot in 2001. A year later they starred opposite each other in the smash film The Sweetest Thing.
By 2005 they had split, with their divorce finalised two years later.
“My marriage was connected to my career, everything about my work. It was, you know, Christina is an actress. We were in the limelight,” Schaech star said during an April 2022 appearance on Jana Kramer’s “Whine Down” podcast.
“I loved her so much. I still love her so much. I don’t think [wife Julie Solomon] will ever be offended that I would ever say that.”
The Up All Night star went public with her true love, Martyn LeNoble, in 2009.
The actress and the Porno for Pyros bass guitarist were friends for more than a decade before romance blossomed in 2008.
That same year, the Dutch musician was by Applegate’s side as she went through treatment for breast cancer.
“I’m very grateful to Martyn for coming along at a time that he did because he’s been my rock through all of this,” she said of LeNoble.
“He gave me something to really want to live for and something to smile about. I have a small but mighty support system and Martyn has really been an incredible part of my life. Without him, I don’t know if I could’ve gone through any of it.”
The couple became engaged on Valentine’s Day in 2010 and in January 2011 welcomed their first and only child together, daughter Sadie Grace.
In 2013 Applegate wore a Maria Lucia Hohan, “a long hippy dippy dress” as she walked down the aisle to marry LeNoble
They said their I-dos “surrounded by family in a private ceremony at their home in Los Angeles”, reported People magazine.
In recent years, the Samatha Who? actress has privately battled further health issues.
She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2021. She has since candidly spoken about her condition and what it means for her future.
“We don’t know what my future as an actress is going to be,” she told Variety in 2023.
“How can I handle it? How can I go onto a set and call the shots of what I need as far as my boundaries, physically? I don’t know who is going to be as loving and understanding as this group of people were.”
She admitted rewatching the final season of Dead To Me was hard, because she “could see the excruciating pain I was in every day I was there and I didn’t want to relive it”.
In February 2023, Applegate attended the SAG Awards, and revealed that would likely be her last awards show appearance due to her Multiple Sclerosis battle.
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