Christina Applegate

Real talk, I’ve never seen much of anything Christina Applegate has been in. She’s in Mars Attacks!, but her character is so minor that even the IMDb synopsis doesn’t have her in it. I think she might’ve played Jack Black’s character’s girlfriend, and you forgot until just now that Jack Black was in it, didn’t you? I hated what I saw—very little—of Married With Children. Her episodes of Friends came after I stopped watching the show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her episode of Family Ties, but she appears to have been in a band in it with Rain Phoenix, whose birthday was yesterday.

Heck, I’ve never even seen Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, I don’t think, practically alone of my generation. If I did, it was on VHS when I was still in grade school. I do want to see the Grand Theft Parsons movie, but I haven’t seen Anchorman because it’s not a style of comedy I enjoy. Really, startling amounts of her career is “yeah, I didn’t think I’d like that,” with a few “I don’t remember that episode,” “I know I didn’t watch that episode,” and “I haven’t gotten around to it yet” thrown in.

So why am I writing about her? Well you might ask! For one thing, one of the goals of this column is to cover people so that they’re written up in advance of death. We don’t talk about that, but there it is. And, with all due respect, Christina Applegate is not in the best of health. She has a genetic condition that leaves her prone to breast and ovarian cancer; she underwent a double mastectomy in 2008. Currently, she has multiple sclerosis and has retired from on-camera work entirely. She has a reduced life expectancy. Not as low as with some diseases, but you still want to get in ahead of these things.

More importantly, she’s one of those actresses who’s in my head as “I would probably really like her if she were in things I liked.” The best demonstration of this is her classic Saturday Night Live appearance. She appeared in the first Matt Foley sketch as one of two kids to be scared straight by the motivational speaker. She’s wonderful in it. Everyone talks about Farley, but it’s probably some of the best work David Spade has ever done simply by not breaking completely, and her delivery of “I want to live in a van down by the river” is flawless.

Obviously, I wish Applegate were in better health because she seems like a decent person and I don’t want her to be in bad health. (Let’s not pretend here there’s no one I wish bad health on, even in Hollywood.) But also it’s because I really think there are more great performances in her. I’d like to see her get given good voice roles, which she remains open to. I am not interested in an animated Married With Children revival, but I would love to see her in something that fully explored her talent.