Mayim Bialik captured the hearts of many in 2010 with the bookish but complex Amy Farrah Fowler in the popular TV series The Big Bang Theory. She appeared in 203 episodes of the show and for her portrayal, she won two Critics’ Choice Awards, four Emmy Award nominations, and a SAG Award nomination.
There’s no doubt that she got famous by joining the TV’s hottest sitcom but all that fame didn’t come easy to the actress. And she knows the cost of the fame very well.
Mayim Bialik’s Hidden Struggles Before $25M Prosperity
Looking from the outside Mayim Bialik‘s life seems all sorted but as said, “success comes with a price tag,” that’s what happened in her case. She candidly discussed her struggles via her other unexpected roles as a podcaster and social media influencer.
Bialik walked away with 5 seasons of Blossom, so it would be easy to assume that she might have a bulging bank account at that time but that wasn’t it. She didn’t make a lot of money from her TV show. Back then, TV actors, especially young women in successful but not super popular sitcoms, didn’t earn as much as they do today.
Bialik had to work hard, tutoring and doing various jobs, to pay for college because her TV salary wasn’t enough. She wants people to know that she didn’t become super rich from the show and that it didn’t even go into reruns. As the 48-year-old said in the Ever Actor podcast:
“When I went to college, I was not an independently wealthy, I-never-have-to-work-again person. I tutored, I did all the things that people do to make ends meet. I budgeted… We did not make the kind of money that set us up for the entire universe.”
But besides all the struggles she faced in life, Mayim Bialik has reached the heights of success.
Mayim Bialik’s Journey from Child Actor to The Big Bang Triumph
Despite her fame as a child actor, Bialik felt out of place. She grew up in San Diego and got her first acting job in 1988’s Pumpkinhead when she was just 12 years old. Her breakthrough role came in 1990 when she was cast in Blossom. In recent years, she held recurring roles on ABC Family’s Secret Life of the American Teenager and Fox’s Til Death.
But the real success game for her started when she was cast in The Big Bang Theory. In the show, she as Amy was a neurobiologist. In real life, Bialik, too owns a Ph. D. in neuroscience from UCLA, with degrees in neuroscience, Hebrew, and Jewish studies.
During the middle seasons of BBT, the actress earned $200,000/episode—totaling $4.5M/season. In 2017, her earnings were raised earnings to $450,000/episode for the final two seasons—reaching $10M/season. Bialik earned $1 million per year as the co-host of Jeopardy!
She is also the author of books including Beyond the Sling, Mayim’s Vegan Table, Girling Up, and Boying Up. Her book Girling Up achieved #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List.
