Christina Applegate Looked Back On Being Overly Sexualized By Hollywood As A Teenager: ‘It’s Pretty Gross’

Christina Applegate‘s breakout performance was as Kelly Bundy in the archetypal ’90s sitcom, Married… with Children. She could have carved out a career playing equally ditzy blondes, but she refused to let herself be typecast.

“Billions. Billions,” Applegate told Vanity Fair about the number of offers she received to play other Kelly-like characters. “I never took one of them. I would audition for stuff and people would be like, ‘Oh my god, she gave the best audition of anyone, but it’s Christina, and we can’t have that name associated with this masterpiece.’ That happened more times than you can imagine.”

Applegate also discussed the “gross” part about being famous.

“I was never on the receiving end of any kind of lasciviousness from anyone before [Married… with Children] because I was wearing bells around my ankles and moccasins and wearing patchouli. I was a gross little hippie kid. Looking back on it in hindsight, it’s pretty gross. Yeah, that part of it kind of sucked. Men had posters of this little 17-year-old, with me holding pearls. Like, who let me do that I didn’t even know what the connotation was.”

Applegate, who was so good in Dead to Me, recently attended her “last awards show as an actor probably” due to her MS diagnosis.