Christina Applegate is opening up about a long-forgotten teenage crush—and the Hollywood star who once completely captured her heart.
In her new memoir You With the Sad Eyes, the 54-year-old actress reflects on her early years in the entertainment industry, her personal struggles, and even the private diary entries she kept as a teenager. Among the memories she revisits is a surprisingly intense infatuation with Johnny Depp.
According to Applegate, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor appeared frequently throughout her teenage journals, which she began writing at age 13. Now, decades later, she says those once-private thoughts are finally being shared.
“In my closet, there’s a locked box filled with my journals,” Applegate writes in the book. “Consider yourself lucky—that box is now open.”
Inside those pages, she admits she was “madly in love” with Depp when she was just 15 years old.
At the time, Depp was part of her social circle thanks to mutual friends, including her longtime best friend Sam Sarkar. Being around him only intensified the feelings she documented in her diary.
Applegate describes her teenage entries as an emotional whirlwind, filled with shifting thoughts and dreams about the actor.
In one passage she recalls writing about recurring dreams in which Depp appeared, even though the details often faded when she woke up. What lingered, she wrote, was simply his presence.
Looking back now, Applegate says the memories capture the complicated emotions of adolescence—those moments when admiration, curiosity, and longing can blend together in powerful ways.
The memoir explores far more than that youthful crush. Applegate also reflects on the challenges she faced early in her career, as well as her more recent battle with multiple sclerosis, which she publicly revealed in 2021.
But the candid story about her teenage feelings for Depp offers readers a lighter, nostalgic glimpse into the past of a Hollywood star who, like many people, once filled her diaries with the names of the people she admired most.
