Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting

Kaley Christine Cuoco-Sweeting (born November 30, 1985) is an American actress, known for her roles as Bridget Hennessy on the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules (2002–2005), Billie Jenkins on the final season of the supernatural drama series Charmed (2005–2006) and Penny on the CBS comedy series The Big Bang Theory (2007–present) for which she won a Critics' Choice Television Award in 2013 and a People's Choice Award in 2014. Cuoco has also appeared in films such as To Be Fat like Me (2007), Hop (2011) and Authors Anonymous (2014). Early life Cuoco was born in Camarillo, California, to realtor Gary Carmine Cuoco and homemaker Layne Ann Wingate. Gary is of Italian descent while Layne is of English and German descent. As a child, Cuoco was once a regionally ranked amateur player in tennis, a sport she took up when she was 3 years old. She stopped playing at the age of 16 in 2002. Career Cuoco made her first feature film appearance as the young Karin Carter in the 1995 action thriller Virtuosity. In 1999, Cuoco appeared on the CBS sitcom Ladies Man and in 2000 she portrayed former Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick in the TV movie Growing Up Brady as well as starring in the Disney Channel Original Movie Alley Cats Strike. In September 2002, Cuoco began a starring role as Bridget Hennessy on the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules. Bridget was the oldest child, despite Cuoco being 6 years younger than Amy Davidson, who played her younger sister. Due to low ratings, ABC cancelled the series on May 17, 2005. In September 2007, Cuoco began starring in the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, playing Penny, a Cheesecake Factory employee and aspiring actress who lives across the hall from scientists Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper. Prior to the 2010–2011 season, she earned $60,000 an episode for the series, the same as her co-stars. In 2010, the cast negotiated a raise for each actor to make $200,000 per episode. On September 13, 2010, she broke her leg in a horse-riding accident and missed two episodes of the series. In late October 2012, Cuoco enlisted the help of her sister Briana to organize a flash mob on the set of the show, in which she and the cast and crew surprised the studio audience by suddenly lip-synching and dancing to Carly Rae Jepsen's song "Call Me Maybe". A video of the event was posted on YouTube and became a viral success. A clip from the performance was also played during Cuoco's January 8, 2013 appearance on the late night talk show Conan. As of 4 August 2014, Cuoco and her co-stars from The Big Bang Theory Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons, each earn an estimated $1 million per episode. Personal life While working on The Big Bang Theory, Cuoco privately dated co-star Johnny Galecki for roughly two years until December 2009, while their characters on the show were also dating. She told CBS Watch in September 2010 that they have remained on good terms since ending their relationship. She became engaged to addiction specialist Josh Resnik in October 2011, but they had ended their engagement by March 2012. Cuoco subsequently became engaged to professional tennis player Ryan Sweeting in September 2013, after three months of dating. They married on December 31, 2013, in Santa Susana, California.