Mayim Bialik

Early life

Mayim Chaya Bialik was born on December 12, 1975, in San Diego, California, to Barry (d. 2015) and Beverly (née Winkleman) Bialik. Three of her four grandparents emigrated from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Bialik was raised as a Reform Jew, but now considers herself to be Orthodox Jewish. Her personal name, Mayim, originates in a mispronunciation of Miriam, her great-grandmother's name. It also means "water" in Hebrew.

Bialik attended Walter Reed Junior High School (now Walter Reed Middle School) and graduated from North Hollywood High School in North Hollywood, California, as part of the class of 1993. At the end of Blossom, she chose to attend UCLA, although she also had been accepted at 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.

Bialik earned a B.S. degree in neuroscience, with minors in Hebrew and Jewish studies, and went on to study for a doctorate in neuroscience. She took a break from studies in 2005 to return to acting. Bialik returned to earn her Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, in 2007. Her dissertation was an investigation of hypothalamic activity in patients with Prader–Willi syndrome, entitled "Hypothalamic regulation in relation to maladaptive, obsessive-compulsive, affiliative and satiety behaviors in Prader–Willi syndrome."

Acting 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 the former.

When Molloy folded after its six episodes, Blossom premiered as a mid-season replacement on January 3, 1991, and aired until May 22, 1995. She had a major part in the Woody Allen comedy film Don't Drink the Water in 1994. 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 game show Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?. Between 1995 and 2005, Bialik mostly did voice-over 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 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 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. 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 Bang 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. Amy is a neurobiologist, which is a field related to Bialik's real-life academic career in neuroscience. Bialik's performance in The Big Bang Theory earned her Emmy Award nominations in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 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." She is cast as one of the guest stars on the Steve Carell 2014 improvisational sketch show Riot.

In August 2014, Bialik began hosting a revival of Candid Camera on TV Land alongside Peter Funt. On March 6, 2012, her book, Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way, was released. Her most recent movie appearance was in a Lifetime Christmas movie, The Flight Before Christmas in 2015.

GrokNation

In August 2015, Bialik launched her own lifestyle website, GrokNation, which caters to women and includes wide-ranging topics such as religion, popular culture, parenting, and Hollywood. Bialik also mentioned on her interviews that her website's title was in reference to the classic 1961 sci-fi novel Stranger in a Strange Land and was derived from the word grok, which means to fully grasp something in the deepest way possible.

Books

Bialik has also written two books with pediatrician Jay Gordon (as well as one by herself). Beyond the Sling is about attachment parenting, while Mayim's Vegan Table contains over one hundred vegan recipes written by Bialik. Her third book is called "Girling Up" and is about the struggles and ways in which girls grow up whilst showing the scientific ways in which your body changes too.

Personal life

Bialik married Michael Stone on August 31, 2003, in a Victorian-themed ceremony that included traditional Jewish wedding customs. Stone was born into a Mormon family and converted to Judaism. Bialik and Stone have two sons, Miles Roosevelt Bialik Stone (b. 2005) and Frederick Heschel Bialik Stone (b. 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, her marriage ended in divorce.

In a 2012 interview, Bialik stated she sees herself as an "aspiring Modern Orthodox". Bialik has also described herself as a "staunch Zionist". She is a self-professed fan of the Orthodox Jewish a cappella group The Maccabeats of Yeshiva University, and appeared with her two sons lighting the menorah in the group's 2011 Hanukkah music video. During the 2014 Gaza Conflict, she donated money to the IDF for armored vests. She has also 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 encountered with the help of Partners in Torah. Bialik is a celebrity spokesperson for the Holistic Moms Network.

In 2014, Bialik was awarded an honorary D.H.L. degree from Boston University.

Bialik is a vegan and a founding member of the Shamayim V'Aretz Institute, a Jewish organization that advocates for the ethical treatment of animals.

She stated on The Late Late Show with James Corden that she identified herself as a feminist.

Written works