She appeared alongside her mother on the long-running soap opera Days of Our Lives.
Even earlier than that, she appeared in a commercial for Playtex baby bottles when she was only three months old.
For most children, childhood is a time of play and discovery.
For Christina, it was also a time of working in front of cameras.
By age ten, she had already landed a role in the horror film Jaws of Satan. Soon after that, she played a young version of actress Grace Kelly in a television biopic about the Hollywood star who later became Princess of Monaco.
Growing up around film sets and studios shaped her life in ways she didn’t fully understand at the time.
She later reflected that she spent so much time acting that she sometimes struggled to figure out who she really was as a person.
“I don’t think I’ve lived my own life,” she admitted years later.
“I’ve been this other person my whole life.”
Fame Comes Early
Everything changed dramatically in 1987.
At just sixteen years old, Christina landed the role that would make her famous across America: Kelly Bundy on the hit sitcom Married… with Children.
The show was a huge success, becoming one of the most popular television comedies of the era.
Christina’s character, Kelly Bundy, was portrayed as a stereotypical “dumb blonde”—a carefree and often clueless teenager whose humor and attitude made audiences laugh week after week.
The role turned Christina into a household name almost overnight.
Suddenly she was recognized everywhere she went.
But the character she played on television wasn’t actually much like her real personality.
In a 1989 interview with The Boston Globe, she explained the difference.
