Christina Applegate shares past love with Brad Pitt

American actress Christina Applegate has disclosed an unexpected connection between herself and Hollywood icon Brad Pitt. The actress revealed that she had a romantic relationship with Pitt long before he rose to fame—and that she famously left him for another star.

The Married… with Children actress remembers attending the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards with Pitt, but her attention was elsewhere. In her memoir, You With Sad Eyes, she writes, “I had spent all night staring at [Sebastian] Bach, who was then a long-haired hunk fronting the band Skid Row.”

“I hate to put it like this, but Brad back then was still making his way as an actor, and he wasn’t yet THE Brad Pitt—the man of so many people’s dreams,” she continued. At the time, Pitt was 25 years old and Applegate was 17.

After she abandoned him at the awards show, Pitt was reportedly hurt and didn’t speak to her for many years. Interestingly, Pitt later shared the story with his future partners; one of them, a fellow Oscar winner, eventually asked Christina Applegate if she was indeed the girl who had dumped him that evening.

“Eventually, we agreed that I’d been a kid,” Christina Applegate wrote. “And though he deserved much better, it was time to forgive the child who dumped him for the lead singer of Skid Row.”