Kaley's Comet

Kaley Cuoco was so beguiling as Penny on The Big Bang Theory that she soon became one of the highest paid actors in television. With HBO’s comedic thriller series The Flight Attendant, she entered exciting, slightly sinister new territory – but it proved her range as an actress and cemented her broad-based appeal.

- By Sandra Parmee

Kaley Cuoco knows the film and TV business inside out; she basically grew up on set. But now she’s entering a new phase in her career: she started up a production company and she shrewdly optioned a book for TV that has been a huge success. Basically, small-town Penny from The Big Bang Theory suddenly got big.

She starred in nearly 300 episodes of the beloved sitcom, but the actress received her first Emmy nomination last year for her lead role in The Flight Attendant. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe, among others. On the day of the Globe nominations, Kaley was caught off-guard when a press outlet referred to her as a ‘newcomer’ – after 30 years in show business!

‘Was I able to reinvent myself overnight, and they’ve totally forgotten about everything else?’ she says. ‘If they’re willing to see me like that, I’m just laughing in the corner.’

FROM BIT PARTS TO A HIT

Born in Camarillo, just north of Los Angeles, Kaley started modelling as a child and was getting bit parts on shows and in movies by the age of seven. At eight she was cast in the Denzel Washington/Russell Crowe thriller Virtuosity. ‘We thought that was going to be such a big hit,’ Kaley says. It wasn’t.

In 2002, however, she landed a role that would prove significant to her career – on John Ritter’s sitcom