While Brad Pitt was famously wed Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston, his romance with Christina Applegate is less well known. The actress, who rose to fame in the 1980s and was a bigger name than the actor at the time, has opened up about their break-up, which meant he didn’t talk to her "for many years".
Christina, 54, has opened up about their time dating in her new memoir You With The Sad Eyes. The star of Netflix's Dead To Me, who was then starring in the sitcom Married…With Children, recalled how she rejected Brad, now 62, for a rock star.
The mother-of-one detailed how she had invited Brad to be her plus-one at the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards, where she had been invited to be a presenter. However, it was there that she met Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach, who caught her attention instead.
In an extract shared by Page Six, Christina wrote: "I had spent all night staring at Bach, who was then a long-haired hunk fronting the band Skid Row. I hate to put it like this, but Brad back then was still making his way as an actor, and he wasn't yet THE Brad Pitt, the man of so many people's dreams."
She continued: "And it gets worse: Brad was left to sullenly drive my mom … home. Apparently, at a gas station on the way, Brad almost got into a fight with a bunch of gang members, and, not surprisingly, was subsequently very mad at me." She added that he "didn't talk" to her "for many years".
Things didn't last with Sebastian, causing her to regret calling things off with Brad, who it seems was still upset himself. "Much later … two of [Brad's] movie star girlfriends asked me if it was true that I was the girl who left Brad behind at the MTV Video Music Awards," she added. "Brad had apparently told both of them separately that he was still mad at me."
However, it seems that the pair eventually made up. "Eventually, we agreed that I'd been a kid, and though he deserved much better, it was time to forgive the child who dumped him for the lead singer of Skid Row," she shared. Further still, it wasn't long after the awards show that Brad, who is now dating Ines de Ramon, saw his own star soar in 1991's Thelma & Louise, followed by A River Runs Through It in 1992.
Personal struggles
Christina went on to marry actor and screenwriter Johnathon Schaech from 2001 to 2007. She then met musician Martyn LeNoble, and they had a daughter, Sadie, born in 2011, before marrying two years later.
In 2021, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Last week, she opened up in The Guardian about how it has affected her life, writing, "my stomach frequently slows to a halt, leaving me to rush to the emergency room in agony. Most days, simply walking across the room feels like scaling a mountain".
Christina also revealed that she is no longer working, and how the condition has changed her approach to life. "There's no one breathing down my neck to represent their business or movie or TV show, things I’ve had to represent, usually willingly and passionately, for almost 50 years," she notes.
"When your physical situation deteriorates, and your life shrinks to the size of a king-sized bed, suddenly all the things you thought were important shift, too. The truth clarifies, like a camera lens slowly focusing."
