Christina Applegate was devastated when photographers caught her smoking just months after she won her battle with cancer, because it was a “rare slip up”.

Applegate quit the habit after she was diagnosed with the disease last year. She underwent a double mastectomy and was given the all-clear last August.

The actress insists it was a minor setback in her battle to quit her nicotine habit after a traumatic past year, during which her ex-boyfriend Lee Grivas died of a drug overdose.

She tells People magazine, “It’s been very painful because I feel it was discounting all the work that I’ve done. The day I found out I had cancer I quit everything that was bad for me that I was putting in my body.

“Over the last year, with everything that’s happened, there have been a couple of times that I’ve slipped up. That was one of those rare occasions – and of course they got the picture.”