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Christina Applegate played Sue Ellen in the 1991 film Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
The actress, 54, opened up about the time in her life when she was filming her first starring movie role in her memoir, You with the Sad Eyes
Applegate recalls a difficult relationship that tainted the way she felt about herself and the project
Christina Applegate has changed her mind about Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.
The actress, 54, looked back at the making of the 1991 film, her first starring film role, in her book, You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir.
“At that point in my life, things were starting to finally feel like they were turning around. I was maturing out of childhood and into a place where I could make decisions for myself, and the deepest traumas, though stored away in my body, were nevertheless now a decade removed,” she wrote.
“Married… with Children was at its height. I was about to land my first ‘#1 on the call sheet’ movie, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. I’d just moved out of my mother’s house. Everything was new and exhilarating.”
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Christina Applegate as Sue Ellen in “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”
Credit: Warner Bros./courtesy Everett
At the time, the young adult was navigating a difficult relationship, admitting her boyfriend at the time “seemed unhappy” about her work on the film, “jealous that my time was being taken away from him.”
“He would call up my mom and tell her, ‘I don’t understand why she’s not paying attention to me.’ “
Applegate’s mother, Nancy Priddy, would point out, “She’s making a movie. She’s the star. The whole ten-million-dollar film is on her shoulders. Let her do her thing.”
Applegate had her own concerns about making the movie. In the book, she admits, “Just like with Married…, I hadn’t wanted to make Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead at first because it was a studio film. I wanted to do independent movies. I didn’t want to ‘sell out.’ “
For a while, she soured on the film because it wasn’t successful at the time it came out. Over time, however, it found its audience and she came around to it.
“I thought the movie was cheesy, but then I thought everything was. When it came out it was a huge flop, a flop that prevented me from getting jobs because right above the title was my name. It would eventually become one of the most quotable movies,” she wrote.
Concetta Tomei, Christopher Pettiet, Robert Hy Gorman, Christina Applegate, Danielle Harris in “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”
Credit: Warner Bros./courtesy Everett
“I watched it recently and thought, What a great and weird little movie. All these years later, people are still saying, ‘I’m right on top of that.’”
She also opened up about her appreciation for her character, praising Sue Ellen as “an anti–teen idol, smoking cigarettes and cussing.”
“I still remember insisting on wearing my green Doc Martens. But she was just not what the world wanted at that time, I think, and as a young woman in the public eye with painfully low self- esteem, I took it hard.”
You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir is available, wherever books are sold.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source nz.news.yahoo.com ’
