Christina Applegate Mostly Confined to Bed

Christina Applegate says her life is nowhere near a tidy Hollywood narrative, and she's done trying to present it that way. The 54-year-old actor, who has multiple sclerosis and now spends much of her day in bed, tells People her bedroom has become both a physical refuge and the place where she's finally pulling no punches—on her podcast MeSsy and in a new memoir, You With the Sad Eyes, out March 3. Mornings are reserved for driving her 15-year-old daughter Sadie to school, a routine she calls her "favorite thing," before returning home to manage the pain of MS.

The book tracks Applegate's path from a chaotic childhood—marked by molestation by a babysitter at 5 years old, her mother Nancy Priddy's heroin addiction, and further abuse from her mom's boyfriend, per Entertainment Weekly—to teen stardom on Married... With Children, abusive relationships, breast cancer, and now MS. She stresses it's "not an inspirational book," though she hopes it might still motivate readers. Applegate, who's also launching an online community called Next in MS, frames the memoir as the story of "a little girl with sad eyes" who remains marked by that past—only now, she says, she's more resilient and more determined to be blunt about what life actually looks like. "I'm being as honest and raw as I possibly can," she says.