American actress Christina Applegate has long spoken about her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis, and the impacts that follow.
Her most recent health update was in March 2026 following admission into a Los Angeles hospital. The 54-year-old thanked fans for their “outpouring of love.”
“Health issues are a constant for me, but I’m a strong chick and I’m getting stronger and better every day,” she wrote on Instagram. “I’m taking a moment to focus on my health, but I’ll be back with more to say soon enough.”
The Emmy Award-winning actress shared her MS diagnosis in 2021, and has bravely shared her journey since in interviews, memoirs, and on her own podcast MeSy.
“I lay in bed screaming [because of] the sharp pains, the ache, that squeezing,” Christina confessed on her podcast in November 2024. “I’ll try to go get my phone or get my remote to turn on the TV or sometimes, I can’t even hold them. I can’t open bottles now.”
As a result of her condition, Christina battled severe depression – to the point where it was “scaring” her.
“It feels really fatalistic. I’m trapped in, like, this darkness right now that I haven’t felt [in], like, I don’t even know how long, probably 20-something years,” she admitted.
“I don’t enjoy living; I don’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy things anymore.”
From the constant pain and mental health struggles, impacting not only her but also her family including daughter Sadie Grace LeNoble and husband Martyn LeNoble.
In July 2025, Christina revealed how her family was coping.
“We got into a big thing the other day – and sorry Sadie, but it has to be said – she said, ‘I miss who you were before you got sick,'” Christina recalled on Kelly Ripa’s podcast Let’s Talk Off Camera.
“That is just like a knife to the heart because I miss who I was before I got sick too, very much so, every day of my life. It’s such a loss.”
Christiana’s teenage daughter was initially “stoic” upon discovering the diagnosis. But overtime, the battle has “broken” Sadie…
“I see her look at me when I’m in bed and can’t quite move, or I wanna go say goodnight to her in her room, but I can’t quite get down the hallway for whatever reason that my legs aren’t working that day.
“Right now I can barely get to the bathroom, it’s the worst,” she said on her MeSsy podcast. “It’s broken her.”
“She didn’t know this. It was like losing the mum she had to this f*****g thing. And the more she’s gotten older now, I think the more it’s hurting her.”
As of yet, Christina’s vision has not been impacted as her condition progresses. But doctors discovered 30 lesions on her brain, the actress confessed on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
“My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot,” she said at the time. “My hand starts to go weird and then I’ll get a seizure-y feeling sometimes in my brain.”
Christina has confessed she will probably never work on-screen again given her condition. Her last project was filming the third season of Dead to Me opposite Linda Cardellini.
She did, however, make an appearance at the 2024 Emmy Awards to present an award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series – receiving a standing ovation when she walked onto the stage, cane in hand.
At the time, she became visibly emotional at the overwhelming support from the audience and then — in typical Christina Applegate fashion — quipped, “You’re totally shaming my disability by standing, it’s fine.”
However, in a later episode of her podcast, Christina shared that the Emmy Awards was “the hardest day” of her life and she spent the next few days in bed sleeping.
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