Christina Applegate is opening up about merciless remarks she’s gotten over time about her look ― unwelcome feedback that she says began when she was solely 27 years previous.
The “Dead to Me” star opened Tuesday’s episode of her podcast “MeSsy” — which she co-hosts together with her good friend, actor Jamie-Lynn Sigler — by discussing her “weird insecurities about my aging [and] how I look.”
Aaron Rapoport through Getty Pictures
Applegate, 52, mentioned her insecurity stems from an incident that occurred within the late Nineties — across the time she was ending her stint because the ditzy bombshell Kelly Bundy on “Married with Children.”
“At 27 years old, I was on a show,” she recalled to Sigler about 10 minutes into the episode. “And one of the producers… said, ‘Hey, we’re having trouble lighting under your eyes. Your bags under your eyes are so big.’”
Applegate defined that the undereye luggage have been a “hereditary thing,” and even joked to Sigler that her father has “got, like, Louis Vuitton luggage under his eyes.”
She mentioned the producer urged she get the luggage beneath her eyes surgically eliminated, and she or he obliged.
“The only plastic surgery I’ve ever had was to remove the bags under my eyes,” Applegate mentioned. “I went under, and I had them removed, at 27.”
The “Anchorman” alum went on to emphasise how a lot the ordeal nonetheless impacts her shallowness, making her really feel “shame” about her look due to “the things people just plant, these seeds they plant into your head.”
Albert L. Ortega through Getty Pictures
The “Bad Moms” actor additionally spoke about an occasion that occurred in her 40s, when a director criticized her appears. Applegate mentioned she was redoing audio for a film she was in, which meant she needed to regularly rewatch scenes of herself on display screen in an effort to sync the brand new audio together with her lip actions.
Applegate mentioned she was struggling to re-record her traces for one scene as a result of she thought her face appeared saggy in a selected body they saved on pausing on.
“They paused it, and it was like Jowl McJowlton,” Applegate mentioned. “I was like, ‘Ugh, I hate that. Please stop pausing it.’ And the director goes, ‘Yeah, I know, we had to spend a lot of money to fix that.’”
“And I went, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, the studio was really upset.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah, I mean, I told them, it’s like, she’s not Kelly Bundy anymore,’” Applegate continued.
The “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” star mentioned the director went on to inform her that the studio spent “a couple hundred thousand dollars” to “fix my face.”
“I suffered inside from that, because I didn’t know I was so ugly that they had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to erase my face,” Applegate mentioned.
Applegate mentioned the director apologized to her quickly after he made these remarks, and that she continues to be associates with him.
“You can forgive,” Sigler advised Applegate, “but we can call out a bad behavior.”
Gilbert Flores through Getty Pictures
It’s not solely individuals within the leisure trade who’ve gone out of their option to criticize Applegate’s look. In 2023, Applegate posted a screenshot of a remark from a web based troll who claimed that her face appeared prefer it had been labored on by a “bad plastic surgeon.”
Applegate is coping with far more urgent issues than her look these days — particularly after saying in 2021 that she has a number of sclerosis. Lately, the Emmy-winning actor mentioned her neurological situation, which can have an effect on speech, imaginative and prescient and mobility, has additionally led to despair.
“Like, a real ‘fuck it all’ depression… where it’s kind of scaring me too, a little bit, because it feels really fatalistic,” Applegate mentioned on her podcast in June.
Applegate mentioned on her podcast Tuesday that she’d wish to get cosmetic surgery to reinforce the way in which she appears now. However, she mentioned, she’s been turned down by a number of plastic surgeons.
“A lot of doctors won’t do surgery on you once you have MS, because they’re afraid of complications,” Applegate mentioned.
“What you see is what you get now, man,” she mentioned. “I don’t know what else to do.”
