Christina Applegate (born November 25, 1971) is an Emmy Award-winning American actress, known for playing Kelly Bundy on the long-running FOX Broadcasting Company sitcom Married... with Children. She has since established a film and television career, with major roles in several pictures, such as Farce of the Penguins, Anchorman, The Sweetest Thing, a Broadway revival of the musical Sweet Charity. She currently plays the lead character, Samantha Newly, in the ABC sitcom Samantha Who?
Applegate was born in Hollywood, California. Her father, Robert W. Applegate, was a record producer and record company executive, and her mother, Nancy Lee Priddy, was a singer and an actress. Her parents split up shortly after her birth. She has two half-siblings (Alisa and Kyle) from her father's remarriage.
At the age of three months, Christina Applegate made her TV debut, appearing with her mother in the soap Days of Our Lives and later, at age five, in a commercial for Playtex.[citation needed] Her first big screen appearance followed at age nine when she was seen in the 1981 films Jaws of Satan (a.k.a. King Cobra), and Beatlemania. She debuted in a television movie as Young Grace Kelly in the biopic Grace Kelly (1983, opposite Cheryl Ladd) and appeared on her first TV series in Showtime's political comedy Washingtoon (1985), in which she played a Congressman's daughter. She was also spotted as a guest in the shows Father Murphy (1981) and Charles in Charge (1984 and 1985).