Creator / Christina Applegate

"I started doing radio commercials for Kmart when I was 4. They had to splice all my consonants together because I couldn't talk very well. But these jobs helped my mother and me put food on the table. It took the two of us working."

Christina Applegate (born November 25, 1971 in Hollywood, California) is an American actress. If you're of a certain age and you remember the raunchy FOX sitcom Married... with Children, you'll know her as Kelly Bundy, the sexually promiscuous, dumb blonde teenage daughter of Al Bundy (played by Ed O'Neill) and Peggy Bundy (played by Katey Sagal). Her most notable roles beyond that were in the films Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and in the series Jesse, Samantha Who?, Up All Night and Dead to Me. She also voiced Brittany in the Alvin and the Chipmunks films, Mary Beth in The Book of Life, and had a guest role in Ask the StoryBots.

A trained dancer, she was a founding member of the Pussycat Dolls when they started out as a burlesque troupe performing at the Viper Room.

She developed multiple sclerosis in 2021 and later announced during the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards her intention to step away from acting due to declining health.

---

Associated Tropes:

• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Very frequently wore crop tops and bikinis early in her career when she was often cast as Ms. Fanservice, especially as Kelly Bundy.
• Brainless Beauty - Kelly didn't invent the dumb slutty blonde stereotype, but she sure as hell added to its fame. In fact, Christina Applegate has been spending the rest of her career trying to get away from that image.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Her role as Kelly Bundy of Married With Children fame.
• Game-Breaking Injury: Was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, which likely played a role in Dead to Me ending after its third season. She was seen walking with a cane at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony and revealed during in a concurrent interview that she planned to step away from acting due to her declining health.
• I Am Not Spock: Married... with Children may have been her Starmaking Role and she still has a preference for comedy, but she didn't want to be typecast as Ms. Fanservice, so she has spent the rest of her acting career playing intelligent, driven women. In fact, she has spent so much of her career getting away from ditzy, fanservice Kelly Bundy, that odds are, if you see her in a film/tv role, it’s almost CERTAIN that she’s playing a smart, capable, sassy, intelligent woman.
  • She did seem to be going in the direction of being typecast early in her career. For example, she played a character that was for all sakes and purposes a Darker and Edgier Kelly Bundy on an episode of 21 Jump Street.
• Ms. Fanservice: Practically her main purpose in Married With Children.
• Old Shame: In 1989, her date to the MTV Movie Awards was a then not so known actor, while she was a big star. Halfway through the show, she ditched him for a "relatively well known guy" (she has yet to say who). Two years later, a friend was visiting and saw a trailer for a movie and asked "Isn't that the guy you ditched?" Applegate was so shocked she dropped her popcorn. The trailer? Thelma & Louise. The guy? You guessed it: Frank Stallone/strike Brad Pitt!
• Referenced by...: Is name dropped in the 1991 R&B song "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" by PM Dawn.
  "Christina Applegate, you gotta put me on."
• Star-Making Role: Her role as Kelly Bundy in Married... with Children.