American actress Christina Applegate began her career when she was only three months old in Days of Our Lives. She debuted alongside her mother Nancy Priddy and then pulled off her first proper acting role at age ten in Bob Claver’s 1981 horror film Jaws of Satan. After years of notable performances across varying genres, she gained mainstream recognition and became a television darling as Kelly Bundy in Fox’s Married… with Children (1987 – 1997), a reputation she solidified with NBC’s Jesse (1998 – 2000), and ABC’s Samantha Who? (2007 – 2009).
In the five decades her career spanned, the Hollywood native received numerous nominations for coveted awards, including the Golden Globes and Primetime Emmy, which she won in 2003 for her guest role in Friends. Forced into retirement due to a health challenge, Christina Applegate has adjusted to the realities of her condition. While she’s fierce about finding new and fulfilling ways to keep living, she’s also preparing for what she says is “looming.”
She Was Diagnosed With Multiple Sclerosis While Filming Dead To Me Season 3
Christina Applegate was working on Liz Feldman’s dark comedy Dead to Me when she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease. She began treatment, but her condition worsened, making it difficult for the actress to perform. “By the end of making Dead to Me, I had to have three people help me down the stairs of my trailer to get to my wheelchair to even get to set. I was completely stripped of my independence, my autonomy,” reads an excerpt from her article published on The Guardian. Regardless, she was bent on completing the project. “I danced through the pain, and when I was done, I collapsed. It was 2022, and I’ve been collapsing ever since.”
The actress told Good Morning America’s anchor Robin Roberts that she first experienced the symptoms in early 2021 as just tingling in her toes. “By the time we started shooting in the summer of that same year, I was being brought to set in a wheelchair.” Applegate disclosed she suffers a lot of the pains associated with the condition in The Guardian article. “When I wake up, I often can’t get my arm to move far enough to grab the cup of water by my bed or my phone from its charger,” she wrote. The actress subjects herself to infusions every six months to slow the disease’s progress, but they destroy her B cells, leaving her prone to infections. “Most days, simply walking across the room feels like scaling a mountain.”
Christina Applegate’s MS Diagnosis Prompted Her To Purchase Burial Plots
The actress isn’t interested in sugarcoating how MS has changed her life. She expressed in an interview with The New York Times in March 2026 that the disease is chipping away at her life. “It’s slowly killing us, guy. Period, end of story,” she responded to a question about what she wished people knew about the condition. “Whether it’s 20 years, 30 years, it’s taking away our functions,” added the Dead to Me star.
Later that month, she told NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin that she thinks of death every day. “…It’s looming,” she said, “it looms for all of us, but for people who have a disease like this, you never know.” With that, the actress revealed she’s bought her burial plot. “I bought my plots already…there’s going to be three of us there.”
She Has Stepped Away From Acting But Is Open To Voice Roles
Since she was diagnosed, the Kelly Bundy actress spends most of her time isolating at home. But in January 2024, she attended the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards where she presented the gong for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series to Ayo Edebiri. Earlier, in a May 2023 interview with Vanity Fair, she hinted that her acting days are over. “I can’t even imagine going to set right now. This is a progressive disease,” she told the publication. “I don’t know if I’m going to get worse. I can do voiceover stuff because I have to support my family and keep my brain working.”
The Emmy-winning comedy star was billed to reprise Kelly Bundy in Sony Pictures’ animated reboot of Married… with Children. However, TVLine reported that the series is no longer in development. She was also attached to star in Kathleen Robertson’s Your Time Is Up, but it’s uncertain if she’s still involved with the project. Christina Applegate now hosts a podcast with The Sopranos’ Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2016. Check out these behind-the-scenes facts about Ryan Gosling’s space sci-fi Project Hail Mary.
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