Mayim Bialik

Mayim Chaya Bialik (born December 12, 1975) is an American actress, author and former game show host.

Mayim Chaya Bialik was born on December 12, 1975, in San Diego, California, to Beverly (née Winkleman) and Barry Bialik.

Her family were Jewish immigrants who lived in the Bronx, New York City.

Three of her four grandparents migrated from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.

Bialik started her career as a child actress in the late 1980s.

Her early roles included the 1988 horror film Pumpkinhead (her first acting job) and guest appearances on The Facts of Life (two final-season episodes) and Beauty and the Beast.

In 1988 to 1989, she appeared in eight episodes of the sitcom Webster as Frieda, Webster's classmate.

It was for Beauty and the Beast, where she played a sewer-dwelling girl named Ellie (with about ten lines of dialogue) that she obtained her Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card.

Bialik appeared in three episodes of MacGyver as Lisa Woodman.

She appeared in Beaches (1988), playing Bette Midler's character as a young girl.

Many reviews singled out her performance as a strong point in the film.

She appeared in the music video for Michael Jackson's song "Liberian Girl".

In 1990, she was tied to two television pilots, Fox's Molloy and NBC's Blossom.

Molloy produced six episodes for a tryout run, followed by the shooting of the pilot special for Blossom.

The latter aired two weeks before the Fox series and garnered higher ratings.

From 1991 to 1995, she played the title character of the NBC sitcom Blossom.

When Molloy folded after its six episodes, Blossom premiered as a mid-season replacement on January 3, 1991, and aired until May 22, 1995.

On September 8, 1992, Bialik was a celebrity contestant guest in the episode "Disturbing The Heavenly Peace", the first episode of the second season of the PBS game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? She had a major part in the Woody Allen comedy film Don't Drink the Water in 1994.

Bialik graduated in 1993 from North Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, California.

In acknowledgment of her acting commitments, she was granted a deferred acceptance and attended University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Between 1995 and 2005, she mostly did voiceover work for cartoons, such as The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Disney's Recess and Kim Possible, Cartoon Network's Johnny Bravo, and Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold!.

She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in neuroscience, with minors in Hebrew and Jewish studies, in 2000.

Bialik has said she did not have the grades needed for medical school.

She went on to study for a doctorate in neuroscience.

She took a break from studies in 2005 to return to acting.

She appeared in the feature film Kalamazoo? (2005) and in three episodes of the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm as Jodi Funkhouser, the daughter of a friend of Larry David.

The character transitioned to male in a later episode, going by the name Joey, and was recast to Chaz Bono.

Bialik also made guest appearances as a fictionalized version of herself in the series Fat Actress and in an episode of Saving Grace.

Bialik had a recurring role as the high school guidance counselor in ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

She returned to earn her Doctor of Philosophy degree in neuroscience from UCLA in 2007 under Dr. James McCracken.

Her dissertation was titled "Hypothalamic regulation in relation to maladaptive, obsessive-compulsive, affiliative and satiety behaviors in Prader–Willi syndrome".

In 2009, Clinton Kelly nominated her for a makeover on TLC's What Not to Wear.

From 2010 to 2019, she played neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, for which she was nominated four times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2015 and 2017.

Bialik shared hosting duties of Jeopardy! with Ken Jennings on a rotating basis between August 2021 and December 2023.

She joined the cast of The Big Bang Theory as Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler in 2010.

Her first appearance was in the season3 finale as a potential love interest for the character of Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons).

After being raised as a Reform Jew, she described herself as Modern Orthodox Jewish in 2013.

Bialik became a Bat Mitzvah and has called herself a "staunch Zionist".

Her name, Mayim ("water" in Hebrew), originates in a family nickname of her great-grandmother, Miriam.

The Hebrew-language poet Hayim Nahman Bialik was her great-great-great-granduncle.