“Whether it’s 20 years, 30 years, it’s taking away our functions. I don’t want to hear about your soy oil water tincture crap. No thank you. We’re so tired. We’re tired to a point where you would never understand. You. Will Never. Understand. I wake up and my hands are cramped. I can’t move my head, I can’t walk to the bathroom. So don’t say to me, ‘You’re looking so good today.’ I don’t want to hear it. Just help me up. That’s all.”

In a conversation with the New York Times about her memoir, YOU WITH THE SAD EYES, Emmy Award-winning actress Christina Applegate made it very clear that she has little time for false niceties and anything less than all-out honesty as she pushes through her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. What comes through is a woman who is tough but gentle, intelligent and cool, and a survivor above all.

"YOU WITH THE SAD EYES leaves us with a distinct desire for MS to end...in order to see great performers like Christina Applegate return to the stage and to the life of dance, acting and hilarity that brought her into our lives in the first place."

Applegate starts life as a happy baby. But then her father suddenly is ensconced in Big Sur and not with her and her mother in Laurel Canyon. She runs around in the beautiful Canyon --- a little hippie who calls her mom’s former boyfriend, Stephen Stills, “Uncle Stephen.” When she is five, her mom entrusts her to a group of teens from the area as babysitters, and one of them sexually abuses her. From that moment on, her sense of fear, sadness and self-loathing becomes the biggest obstacle as she grows up.

Applegate’s mom finds a new man who becomes her truly evil stepfather. Between his violent actions and their heroin use, her mom makes sure that she goes to all of her auditions and continues to grow a career that will take care of the family for years to come and give Applegate her own home at 15.

Along with the usual tales of the horrors of the business, Applegate begins to experience difficult relationships of her own and a penchant for partying that includes a friendship with Johnny Depp and other now-iconic performers at the start of their careers. She becomes a regular at the Viper Room, the famous spot where River Phoenix died, a club created to protect young celebrities --- giving them a place to relax, play music and dance, and get away from the endless pressures of being famous and beautiful.

As her fame from her iconic role on “Married...with Children” grows, Applegate’s life becomes more complex. Eventually she falls into a relationship with an international man of mystery who abuses her --- so badly, in fact, that the makeup artists on the show have to work around her obvious bumps and bruises to get her camera-ready.

Applegate’s career post-“Married...with Children” is a wild ride of success and nothing, of awards and embarrassing jobs for money. She suffers through breast cancer, the end of her abusive relationship and a subsequent marriage, divorce and other difficulties until she finally finds her Prince Charming and settles into a beautiful life with her beloved daughter.

Then comes the heartbreaking news about Applegate’s MS, which has kept her for the most part in bed and unable to enjoy all the things for which she worked so hard. After 50 years of acting, her diagnosis gives her the time to work on this book. Few memoirs are written with such a clear, concise, angry and expressive voice as hers.

YOU WITH THE SAD EYES leaves us with a distinct desire for MS to end, or at least for new treatments to become available, in order to see great performers like Christina Applegate return to the stage and to the life of dance, acting and hilarity that brought her into our lives in the first place.