Mayim Bialik

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Mayim Bialik
Mayim Bialik at the rehearsal for the 1989 Academy Awards
Born	December 12, 1975 (1975-12-12) (age 32) San Diego, California
Years active	1986 - present
Spouse(s)	Michael Stone

Mayim Hoya Bialik (born December 12, 1975) is an American actress. She is known for her lead role as Blossom Russo in the early-1990s NBC television sitcom Blossom.

1 Biography
2 Filmography
3 Footnotes
4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Bialik was born in San Diego, California to Jewish parents Barry Bialik and Beverly Winkelman. Her grandparents were European refugees from the Holocaust, immigrating from Poland and Czechoslovakia/Hungary. Bialik was raised in the Reform Jewish religion.^[1] One of her ancestors is the famed poet Chaim Nachman Bialik,^[2] but she is not related to Wall Street Journal online columnist Carl Bialik.^[3] Her name means water in Hebrew.

[edit] Career

Bialik had a career as a child actress in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1989, Bialik won the Young Artist Award for "Best Young Actress in a Motion Picture Comedy or Fantasy" for her role in Beaches (1988). She also made a notable guest appearance as Lisa Woodman in MacGyver.

Her greatest success came in 1991 when Blossom joined NBC's Monday night lineup following The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Both shows enjoyed popularity, especially among younger viewers, for the first couple of years of their respective runs. Blossom was finally canceled in 1995.

After more than ten years away from show business, Bialik appeared in the feature film Kalamazoo? released in late 2005. She also appeared in an episode of the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm as Jodi Funkhouser, the lesbian daughter of a friend of Larry David. Bialik also had a major part in the series Fat Actress.

[edit] Personal life

At the end of Blossom, she chose to attend UCLA, despite reports that she was accepted at both Harvard and Yale^{[citation needed]}. She stated that she wanted to stay close to her parents and did not want to move all the way to the East Coast. She earned a bachelor's degree in 2000 in neuroscience and Hebrew and Jewish studies, and went on to the Ph.D. program in neuroscience. A 2002 interview stated that Bialik is now involved in Conservative Judaism.^[1]

She took a break from these studies in 2005 to return to acting.^[4] As of 2006, she is completing work on her thesis, an investigation of Prader-Willi syndrome.^[5]

She is married to Michael Stone. She gave birth to their first child, a son, Milo on October 10, 2005, and she is expecting her second child in mid 2008.