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" She may be the star of a hit television series, but at the moment Christina Applegate has gone to the dogs. Okay, make that dog -- more specifically, Tallulah, the spirited miniature pinscher-dachshund mix she named after Jodie Foster&amp;#039;s character in Bugsy Malone, the movie that inspired her to become a performer.  The moment Christina settles into one of the plump sofas in the living room of her Hollywood Hills home, Tallulah bounds up and nuzzles Christina&amp;#039;s right thigh with a reflexiveness that suggests this is a regular occurrence. As, clearly, is the appearance of Natasha, a slow-moving black cat who materializes at the opposite thigh, completing what amounts to a Christina sandwich.  Christina -- who spent 11 years as Kelly Bundy, the ditzy, tarty teenager on the FOX sitcom Married...With Children and is now enjoying a well-deserved small-screen resurgence on ABC&amp;#039;s comedy Samantha Who? -- is definitely a homebody. And sitting in her cozy living room with a crackling fire and a steaming mug of tea, it&amp;#039;s easy to understand why. &amp;quot;People are always making fun of me because I won&amp;#039;t leave the house,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But having friends over is my favorite thing to do. I&amp;#039;ve got my TV, I&amp;#039;ve got my animals, I&amp;#039;ve got the fireplace. And these days, you can&amp;#039;t even go out shopping without people taking pictures.&amp;quot; Although Christina, 36, was born and raised in Los Angeles and has owned this home for 12 years, some of the most transformative -- and traumatic -- experiences of her recent past took place in New York City. She lived there for 13 months from late 2004 through 2005 while starring in the acclaimed Broadway revival of the musical Sweet Charity. She ultimately scored a Tony nomination for her performance, but Christina almost had to drop out when she broke her foot during previews. That same year, Christina also separated from her husband of five years, actor Johnathon Schaech. The pair officially divorced last August.  Now, not unlike her Samantha Who? character, who emerges from an auto accident with amnesia, Christina is starting over. Though unburdened by Samantha&amp;#039;s bad-girl past, the actress is making plans for the future with a fresh perspective. Those plans include a supporting role in this year&amp;#039;s movie The Rocker, but her main focus is her TV show. Since Christina is also one of the sitcom&amp;#039;s producers, its success is doubly gratifying.  &amp;quot;Women are really dominating television right now,&amp;quot; she says, citing series like Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty as well as her own. &amp;quot;There are a lot of talented, strong women out there, and it&amp;#039;s unfortunate that the film business doesn&amp;#039;t recognize that as much. But Samantha Who? is evidence that you can be in your mid-30s and hold something like a show together. I hope there aren&amp;#039;t a lot of women out there who feel like they can&amp;#039;t do that at this age -- because you can do anything.&amp;quot;  You&amp;#039;re best known for comedy, but you&amp;#039;ve said that when you were younger, you were very serious and moody. How do you reconcile those two sides of yourself?  I think a lot of moody people end up becoming funny. I was able to learn so much on Married...With Children -- like timing -- and because it was in front of an audience, I was able to hone that gift. So that&amp;#039;s what people come to me to do -- make their work funny. At least I try. But I&amp;#039;m still that moody, dark girl as well.  As dark as you were back then?  I&amp;#039;m probably a lot happier than a 15-year-old. As we get older, we become comfortable in our own skin. And start to make good choices, and have a sense of humor about life. But I&amp;#039;m very reflective. I&amp;#039;ve always been that way.  Are you at a place in your career where opportunities just come to you?  I don&amp;#039;t know if I&amp;#039;ll ever be at that place, because I&amp;#039;m a risk-taker, so in order for me to get the things I want to get, I&amp;#039;m probably always going to have to work for them. There&amp;#039;s always some new crop of girls who skyrocket to fame, and then there are the people who work hard. I&amp;#039;m one of those -- the middle-class hard worker. You don&amp;#039;t seem to resent that.  No. It&amp;#039;s just the way it is. I&amp;#039;m used to having to work hard to get something. I mean, I&amp;#039;m not going to audition for television -- I&amp;#039;ve proved myself on television for many years. But for Sweet Charity, I had to audition, and it was a hard one. If I wanted to get it [the lead role of dancer Charity Hope Valentine], I had to work hard.  What made Samantha Who? the right time to come back to TV?  I haven&amp;#039;t read anything since Jesse [NBC&amp;#039;s late-&amp;#039;90s sitcom that starred Christina as a single mom] because I thought 13, 14 years on television was enough. But I came back from New York and things were a little different around here, and so, I don&amp;#039;t know, I had to open up something else.  When you say things were different, do you mean your career or your life or both?  I was different. For Sweet Charity, I spent 13 months in New York without coming back here, not once. And I came back as a different person, and a different actor. My goals were different. I didn&amp;#039;t want to play the funny girl beside another really funny person anymore. Anything I did had to be very challenging because I had just finished something so incredibly challenging that to step back would be...I would lose something. I wouldn&amp;#039;t grow.  How has the transition been to being single again? Interesting. New York was -- a lot of stuff happened there, so it was interesting to come home and face my reality and my truth. I think I was sort of in a fantasy world there. And I think that&amp;#039;s why a lot of these things happened, unfortunately, with my separation and whatever. But I&amp;#039;ve been good. I&amp;#039;m so okay with being alone. I&amp;#039;m okay with it. I know that&amp;#039;s strange, but this is my cuddle buddy. [Pets Tallulah]  When you came home, how were you different as a person?  I went through so much that year that it would be hard not to come out of an experience like that a different person -- with a warrior spirit. Because I had to have that to make it through the tribulations and trials that I went through. I think I came back to L.A. a bit stronger than I was before. I know how to say no now, which is something I don&amp;#039;t think I really knew how to do before. I came back a much more direct human being. Was that due to the experience of fighting to stay in Sweet Charity after you broke your foot, or was it being on your own in New York?  I think it was the fight I had to go through. I fought harder [to stay in the musical] than I&amp;#039;ve ever had to fight for anything in my life, and pushed through a great deal of physical and emotional pain. Every night as I would leave, I&amp;#039;d walk across the stage and I would stand there and look out at the audience and just take a moment of gratitude that I was living this unbelievable dream. As I gimped out!  You only had three weeks to rest your foot, barely time to heal.  Not at all. It was totally broken when I started the show.  You attend Agape, the nondenominational spiritual center founded by Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith, and have spoken about the importance of faith at different times in your life. Was injuring your foot one of those times? Yes. Reverend Michael said to me, &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t have a luxury of any negative thought right now. You&amp;#039;ve got to meditate and visualize doctors telling you that you&amp;#039;re a miracle, that they have never seen anyone grow and heal faster.&amp;quot; And within two weeks, I went to the doctor and he said, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re a miracle. I&amp;#039;ve never seen anyone grow and heal faster than you have.&amp;quot; And that was a direct result of all the work that I did with God.  What&amp;#039;s the basis of Agape?  It&amp;#039;s based on the theory that God is everywhere, all the time. Through prayer, meditation, affirmation, you kind of create your own existence and your own experience.  Which is interesting since creating her own existence is what your TV character, Samantha Newly, is doing, thanks to her amnesia. Are there things in your past that you wish you could erase from your memory?  I&amp;#039;d like to get rid of some relationships that I had -- there have been a few wastes of time. And there are some bad hairdos that are still on television five times a day.  What do you like about yourself?  I like that I&amp;#039;m goofy. That&amp;#039;s huge, because I wasn&amp;#039;t for a long time. I like the fact that I love my animals more than I like anybody, really. And I&amp;#039;m very loyal.  You&amp;#039;ve had a lot of successes since your Married...With Children days: hit movies, popular TV shows, an Emmy. What would you still like to conquer? I still want to do more movies, and I want to do another play at some point. And I want to have kids. That&amp;#039;s something I really need to get on soon. Which is difficult in the current situation, but it can be done. Would you be okay having kids on your own? I always saw [having kids] with a partner, but now I don&amp;#039;t know. I want kids more than I want even that. [Laughs] I feel complete when I&amp;#039;m with babies and kids. I want to have that experience in this lifetime, of raising a human being and watching them grow and move on and become an adult. So who knows? If I end up doing it on my own, I don&amp;#039;t see anything wrong with that. In November, People magazine reported that you ran into your former husband at Les Deux Caf\u00E9, a popular night spot in Hollywood, and the two of you behaved like a couple -- holding hands and kissing. Are things amicable between the two of you? We&amp;#039;re really good friends. And that story was a bit exaggerated, to say the least. In fact, incredibly exaggerated. We saw each other, we&amp;#039;re friends, and I adore him -- he&amp;#039;s a great person. We just talked and hung out for a little while and that was the end of it.  So many former couples can&amp;#039;t -- or won&amp;#039;t -- remain friends. What&amp;#039;s the secret to making that work?  It depends on the people. Everyone deals with issues their own way, and we&amp;#039;re two people who can handle that and be friends. Because at the end of the day, he&amp;#039;s not a bad person and I&amp;#039;m not a bad person.  If you want to date, where do you meet guys? Yeah, that&amp;#039;s big. You don&amp;#039;t go to Les Deux! [Laughs] And if you do go there, you&amp;#039;re asking for it. But if I can go to some nice little dive bar somewhere in the Valley, I&amp;#039;ll be fine. [Pauses and laughs] Great -- now my secrets are out!  In your downtime, what do you like to do? Are you a fan of any other TV shows?  Yeah, I&amp;#039;m a big Desperate Housewives fan, Grey&amp;#039;s Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Dancing With the Stars, The Daily Show. I watch a lot of HGTV. I love HGTV. I watch any of those shows: Design on a Dime, Divine Design. I could sit and watch that channel for hours and hours and hours.  Comparing the woman you are now with the girl you were when you did Married...With Children, what have you picked up along the way?  I think I was a lot more afraid of everything back then. I was more afraid of the outcome of my life as an actor, afraid of my own talents, and not as sure of myself. Now, I feel much more sure of all of those things. And I also have an outlook that it&amp;#039;s okay. That things -- if there is, you know, a &amp;quot;failure,&amp;quot; it never really is a failure in the end. Model celebrity We found that there&amp;#039;s nothing pretentious about Christina Applegate. She completely impressed us with her friendly, easygoing attitude. &amp;quot;She talked to everyone,&amp;quot; said REDBOOK special projects director Lori Berger. During the shoot, she asked REDBOOK editors for their opinions about how the pictures were turning out. &amp;quot;She actually cared what we thought,&amp;quot; said Bruce Perez, REDBOOK photo director. &amp;quot;When Christina left, she threw on her jeans, newsboy cap, and a short jacket, and thanked and kissed everyone \u2014 which is not so common for a celebrity,&amp;quot; said Lori. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/interviews/a2555/christina-applegate-bts/>