6 Nov 2014
Todd Aaron Jensen
From child actor to mom to neuroscientist, Mayim Bialik tells us how she’s stayed tenaciously grounded, hilarious, and nerdy after all these years.
Mayim Bialik as Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory Photo: cbs.com
Like Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, her alter ego on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, the top-rated comedy on network television, Mayim Bialik is smart, beautiful, jocular, plays the harp, and has a PhD in neuroscience. Which begs the question: is the 38-year old actress, thrice Emmy-nominated for her work on the smash series, even acting? “Well, I don’t have a lab full of coked-up monkeys with nothing to lose,” she quips, deadpan. “So yeah, I’m probably acting a little bit.”
Bialik’s witty retort, hardboiled without a trace of jest (and therefore twice as funny), is one her trademarks, well honed on NBC’s early-‘90s sitcom Blossom, where she played the adolescent voice of pragmatism in a home overrun by deeply flawed, but endearing male family members. Bialik’s proficiency at tickling the nation’s collective nerve is, she says, “a gift” from her extended family, many of them Jewish immigrants, who understood “the power and protection humor conveys.”
In her regular column at Kveller.com, Bialik shares intimate, frequently hilarious stories about her eccentric bloodline, raising her two young sons, as well as vegan recipes, progressive parenting tips, “second-rate feminist ideas,” she cracks, and helpful hints for detoxing your favorite simian after his latest blow binge. Okay, we might have made up that last one. As Big Bang enjoys an eighth season that is more-watched (and, arguably, funnier) than its first several, Bialik — who proudly identifies as “a character actress” — seems to have the world on a string. Even if her monkeys are out of control.
If history has taught us anything, it’s that the future is usually not bright for child actors. You were in the Bette Midler film Beaches when you were 12, on a hit TV show when you were 14. How is it you avoided becoming another child actor casualty?
I come from kind of an old-fashioned family. My father always reminded me that all of my so-called fame could end in a heartbeat, so I’d better have other stuff that I was working on. After a few years of doing television when I was a kid, I knew I needed to take a break, that there must be a lot more to life. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to see the world.