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Mayim Bialik Mayim Hoya Bialik is an American actress and
neuroscientist. From early January 1991 to May 1995, she played the title character of
NBC's Blossom. Since May 2010, she has played Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler on CBS's The Big ***
Theory. She was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress
in a Comedy Series for her work on The Big *** Theory.
Early life and education Bialik was born in San Diego, California to
Barry Bialik and Beverly Winkelman. Her grandparents emigrated from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and
Hungary in the late 1930s. Hayim Nahman Bialik, Israel's national poet, was Barry's patrilineal
great-great-granduncle. Bialik was raised as a Reform Jew. Her given name means "water"
in Hebrew. Bialik attended Walter Reed Junior High School
in North Hollywood, California. At the end of Blossom, she chose to attend UCLA, although
she also had been accepted to both Harvard and Yale. She stated that she wanted to stay
close to her parents and did not want to move to the East Coast. She earned a B.S. degree
in Neuroscience, Hebrew studies, and Jewish studies, and went on to perform a doctoral
program in neuroscience. She took a break from studies in 2005 to return
to acting. Bialik obtained her Ph.D. degree in 2007. Her dissertation was an investigation
of hypothalamic activity in patients with Prader–Willi syndrome.
Bialik describes herself as a "die-hard Zionist" and visits Israel frequently. She spent several
summers in the country, as a kibbutz volunteer, where she worked in a dairy barn.
Career Bialik started her career as a child actress
in the late 1980s. Her early roles included the horror film Pumpkinhead (1988), her first
acting job, and guest appearances on The Facts of Life and Beauty and the Beast. It was for
her Beauty and the Beast work, in which she played a sewer-dwelling girl named Ellie who
had about 10 lines of dialogue, that Bialik obtained her Screen Actors Guild (SAG) card.
She appeared in three episodes of MacGyver as Lisa Woodman. She appeared in Beaches (1988),
playing Bette Midler's character as a young girl. She also appeared in the video for the
song "Liberian Girl" by Michael Jackson. In 1990, Bialik was tied to two television
pilots, Fox's Molloy and NBC's Blossom. Molloy at first produced six episodes for a tryout
run, followed by the shooting of the pilot special for Blossom. The latter actually aired
two weeks before Bialik's Fox series and ultimately garnered higher ratings than it. When Molloy
folded after its six episodes, Blossom was pursued as a regular series, airing until
1995. She had a major part in the *** Allen comedy film "Don't Drink the Water" in 1994.
Between 1995 and 2005, Bialik mostly did voice-over work for cartoons, such as The Real Adventures
of Jonny Quest and Recess. She appeared in the feature film Kalamazoo?
(2005) and appeared in three episodes of the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm as
Jodi Funkhouser, the lesbian daughter of a friend of Larry David. Bialik also made guest
appearances as a fictionalized version of herself in the series Fat Actress, and made
a guest appearance as a Hasidic Jew in an episode of Saving Grace. She had a recurring
role as the high school guidance counselor in ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American
Teenager. She also made an appearance on the Fox TV show 'Til Death in which she has a
reunion of sorts with two of her Blossom co-stars – Jenna von Oÿ, who played Blossom’s
quirky best friend Six, and Michael Stoyanov, who played Blossom’s older brother Anthony.
In 2009, Bialik was nominated by Clinton Kelly for a makeover on TLC's What Not To Wear.
She joined the cast of The Big *** Theory as Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. Her first appearance
was in the season 3 finale as a potential love interest for the character of Sheldon
Cooper (Jim Parsons). In Season 4, she began as a recurring character playing Sheldon's
"friend that's a girl, but not a girlfriend." Beginning with Season 4, Episode 8, she became
part of the main cast. Bialik's character is a neurobiologist, or neuroscientist, which
corresponds to Bialik's real-life educational pursuits. Bialik's performance in The Big
*** Theory earned her Emmy Award nominations in 2012 and 2013 for Outstanding Supporting
Actress in a Comedy Series. Bialik was one of seven actresses who had a "quirky" personality
to audition for the role. Prior to her joining the cast, in the episode
"The Bat Jar Conjecture", Raj suggests recruiting the real-life Bialik to their Physics Bowl
team, saying "You know who's apparently very smart, is the girl who played TV's Blossom.
She got a Ph.D. in Neuroscience or something." On March 6, 2012, her book, Beyond the Sling:
A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way, was
released. Personal life
Bialik married Michael Stone on August 31, 2003, in a Victorian-themed ceremony with
traditional Jewish customs. Michael was born into a Mormon family and converted to Judaism.
Several years later, his mother converted to Judaism as well. Bialik and Stone had two
sons together: Miles Roosevelt Bialik Stone (born October
10, 2005) Frederick Heschel Bialik Stone (born August
15, 2008) In 2010, Bialik returned to television so
that she could spend more time with her children and stated, "I'm glad that I completed my
PhD and I'm very proud of it, but the life of a research professor would not have suited
my needs in terms of what kind of parenting I wanted to do." In November 2012, their marriage
ended in divorce. In a 2012 interview, Bialik stated that she
would call herself "aspiring Modern Orthodox". She has appeared in several YouTube cameos
as Blossom and Amy Farrah Fowler asking questions about Jewish beliefs. The videos are produced
by Allison Josephs, Bialik's Judaism study partner, whom she met with the help of Partners
in Torah. Bialik is a celebrity spokesperson for the
Holistic Moms Network. Bialik is a vegan and a founding member of
the Shamayim V'Aretz Institute. Bialik spoke at the 2011 Penn State Lehigh
Valley graduation in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Bialik is scheduled to be the featured speaker
at the 2014 National Science Teachers Association's national conference in Boston
Awards and nominations