Selma Blair lived with multiple sclerosis for 40 years before receiving a diagnosis, and she was determined to prevent her friend and former co-star Christina Applegate from having the same experience.

Speaking to British Vogue , Applegate recalled the day that Blair urged her to get tested for the disease after she began having symptoms.

I was sitting in Selmas living room, our children playing, and I told Selma Id been having this weird tingling in my feet, she told the publication. She said, You must get tested for MS. [Even my doctor doubted it] but there it was.

The Dead to Me actor went on to note, In essence, because of her Im going to have a better quality of life.

Applegate went public with her MS diagnosis in 2021, roughly three years after Blair first addressed her experience with the disease. The two actors, who co-starred in the 2002 comedy The Sweetest Thing , have become outspoken advocates for people with MS.

Elsewhere in the article, Blair described the lengths she went to in order to conceal her MS symptoms before she was formally diagnosed. As her Hollywood profile was on the rise with well-received performances in movies like Cruel Intentions and Hellboy , the actor herself felt lost and sad as she grappled with self-hatred behind the scenes.

I was worried since the beginning of time that a glaring fault would remove me from the workforce, she explained. And usually it was my incoordination or getting stuck, too weak or sick, in my trailer or any time, really. The vomiting or body issues were terrifying, [and the] baldness or rashes.