Kaley Cuoco is widely known for playing Penny on The Big Bang Theory, but that's just one
highlight of her career.
She got her start in acting when she was just 5 years old, so she's clearly come a long
way since then!
Here's a look at her stunning transformation.
"Do it."
If you thought that Kaley Cuoco's only talents were in showbiz, think again!
It turns out that she has a knack for playing tennis, a passion she discovered when she
was a kid.
Her parents wanted her to be well-rounded, so they encouraged her to have a hobby in
addition to acting.
In 2014, she told Cosmopolitan,
"My Mom made this rule: If you want to do [acting], you have to pick something else,
too."
And tennis was an obvious choice for that something else.
During her competitive days, she even became a regionally ranked amateur.
She explained to Cosmopolitan,
"As cheesy as it sounds, all my eggs were never in just one basket.
I had a thousand baskets going on."
But that all changed when she realized that she couldn't divide her time and focus between
acting and tennis forever and thus she would have to choose between her two loves.
So at age 16, she decided to call game, set, and match on her tennis career and instead
focus on performing.
"Penny was a struggling actress when we met and now she's a successful pharmaceutical
rep."
"Okay, you don't have to say 'struggling' every time, you can just say 'actress.'"
Cuoco spent much of her early childhood and teenage years in the 90s and early 2000s appearing
in a variety of different TV shows.
That all led up to the moment in 2002 when she finally scored her first major role.
That would be Bridget Hennessy, the eldest daughter of John Ritter and Katey Sagal's
characters on the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules.
But landing the part wasn't easy.
The casting director called Cuoco's agent after her initial audition to tell her how
rough it had gone and to encourage her to try again as they felt that she was still
right for the role.
So she did, which led to her spending the next three years of her life on the show until
it was cancelled in May 2005.
Her experience on 8 Simple Rules taught her not to get too caught up in the scrutiny and
rejection of the entertainment business.
It also taught her the value of hard work and made her realize how much she loves sitcoms.
While starring on 8 Simple Rules, Cuoco endured a bit of a tragedy, when she had to mourn
the loss of John Ritter, her TV dad and mentor.
He fell ill while on set, bleeding internally from a tear in his heart vessel.
Before anyone knew that he was dying, he stopped by Cuoco's dressing room on his way off the
set.
He sat on her couch, told her several times that he loved her, and gave her a hug.
And that was the last she ever saw of him.
She was 17 years old at the time, while Ritter was only 54.
"To this day, if anyone asks me, John Ritter, I get this chill because I love him so much."
Since then, Cuoco has incorporated some of Ritter's acting tricks into her own performances.
In 2012, she told Parade that Ritter sometimes fumbled his lines on purpose, screwing them
up in front of a live audience because he thought they secretly enjoyed seeing him poke
fun at himself.
She admitted that there are moments when she sometimes does this as well.
As she put it,
"That’s totally John sitting on my shoulder, saying, 'Okay, throw one in.
Make a mistake and let them see that you’re normal.'"
As a darling of the small screen for much of her young life, Cuoco realizes that acting
is a career in which appearances are important.
And she's definitely willing to put in the work to look good, as she commits to working
out five days a week.
She told Shape Magazine,
"I love being toned and having muscle; it's so sexy and beautiful."
She's also shared her phases of doing hot yoga, spinning, and personal training sessions
with the likes of Women's Health.
Despite this focus on exercise, Cuoco's admitted to having a little help with that beautiful
body.
She's made no secret of the plastic surgery she's had, including breast implants at the
age of 18.
In 2016, she told Women's Health,
"Years ago, I had my nose done.
And my boobs, best thing I ever did."
She also filled in a line in her neck that had been bothering her since before she was
a teenager.
For Cuoco, plastic surgery isn't shameful.
Rather, it's self-assuring.
As she put it,
"As much as you want to love your inner self...I'm sorry, you also want to look good.
I don't think you should do it for a man or anyone else, but if it makes you feel confident,
that's amazing."
When she was 25, during a quiet date night at home, Cuoco accepted a surprise marriage
proposal from her then-boyfriend, addiction specialist Josh Resnik, who had once been
the bassist for the heavy metal band Danzig.
He'd previously been married once before, while it was her first engagement.
Cuoco's representative told People Magazine,
"The couple are very happy and excited to begin planning their wedding."
Cuoco and Resnik kept most details about their relationship under wraps and never publicly
shared a wedding date.
Alas, mere months after the announcement, the union had ended before it even began.
While Cuoco was appearing at a ceremony in March 2012 to honor Big Bang Theory co-creator
Chuck Lorre, she was asked about her wedding planning inspirations, to which she responded
that she was no longer engaged.
In 2013, a friend introduced Cuoco to tennis player Ryan Sweeting.
After dating for just three months, they started planning to spend a lifetime together.
They got married on New Year's Eve of that year at a secret ceremony that Cuoco later
told Cosmopolitan was:
"The eighth wonder of the world, the greatest wedding of all time."
She wore a pink ball gown designed by Vera Wang and officially changed her name to Kaley
Cuoco-Sweeting.
But after less than two years, the Sweetings decided to divorce.
She told Cosmopolitan,
"I married someone...who completely changed.
The person I ended up with was not the person I originally met.
And that wasn't my fault, that was his."
She even later covered up the tattoo of their wedding date that she'd gotten on her back.
For 12 seasons from 2007 to 2019, Cuoco played what she has described as her "dream role"
on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
She first auditioned for the character of Katie, a part that was nixed after the show's
original test episode.
But then the role of Penny, the blonde bombshell neighbor of two socially awkward scientists,
was added in when the pilot was reshot.
"That was the greatest character I'll ever play in my whole life, and I will never be
the same."
By Season 8, Cuoco was earning $1 million per episode, making her the second highest-paid
actress on TV at the time behind Modern Family's Sofia Vergara.
It's no exaggeration to say that Big Bang's success altered her career trajectory.
Furthermore, she can also credit the show with helping her land a spot on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame.
Her star was unveiled in 2014, and even years later, she still couldn't get over it.
In 2018, she told her fans on Instagram,
"I still don't believe it was real.
I will always be greatly humbled by this moment in my career."
Horseback riding has been a major part of Cuoco's life since she was a teenager.
But in 2010, her equestrian enthusiasm was tested when a freak accident almost cost her
a leg.
What happened was, her horse spooked and bucked her during a lesson.
She was okay until the horse tried jumping over her and landed on her left leg.
During an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, she recounted,
"I thought he landed on leaves, and I was hoping it was leaves I was hearing crackling,
but that was my bones!"
Picking up her leg, Cuoco discovered that it was backward and dangling.
She had never before had a broken bone, but she had to face a scary prospect when she
was given amputation as an option in the emergency room.
She later joked,
"I'm going to have to call into work and tell them I have one foot!"
While recovering, she had to miss two Big Bang Theory episodes and spent the remainder
of the season hiding her cast.
But the accident proved that when Cuoco is knocked off her horse, she gets right back
on it.
After her relationship with Ryan Sweeting ended, Cuoco wasn't sure she would ever marry
again, but soon enough, she found her soulmate.
His name is Karl Cook, son of Intuit co-founder Scott Cook.
He's well-known in equestrian circles, so he and Cuoco had that in common.
But before they met, he knew next to nothing about her, not even that she was a famous
TV star.
In 2016, they bumped into each other at a horse show, and he asked her out to dinner,
and then romance blossomed.
"I don't know, I'm going to flirt with him."
"I don't know if I'm comfortable with that."
"I'm still sleeping with you tonight."
"See if you can get a table by the window."
After getting engaged on Cuoco's 32nd birthday in November 2017, the lovebirds got married
seven months later on June 30, 2018 in Rancho Santa Fe, California.
Months later, they honeymooned on a trip that Cook planned in the Swiss Alps, though they
didn't officially move in together until two years after their wedding.
“Everyone was like so crazed that we didn't live togeth- They couldn't believe.
I was like, 'Why do you care?'
Didn't understand it."
When Cuoco was still just a kid, she appeared in commercials for products like Barbie and
Oscar Mayer.
But her biggest commercial gig happened much later when she started shilling for online
travel agency Priceline.
In the ads, she teamed up with legendary actor William Shatner, who'd been hawking discount
rates as the Priceline Negotiator since the late 90s.
"I always thought they were so, the commercials were so visually cool.
They got to the point, they were funny, and then with Shatner in them, they were- they
were genius."
Cuoco relished in the dream gig of working alongside the iconic Shatner, whom she claimed
was cool, hilarious, and charming, which his legions of fans would surely be happy to hear.
In 2019, Cuoco took her activism to work, hosting a web series for Shell on YouTube
called The Great Travel Hack.
The five-episode show followed two teams competing on a road trip from Los Angeles to New York
City.
The winning team wouldn't necessarily be the one who finished the journey the fastest,
but rather the one that arrived using the least carbon emissions.
"Humans are meant to move around.
That's what we do.
But can we do it in a cleaner way?"
As host, Cuoco led the adventurers on their trip across America.
The contestants rode horses, boats, bikes, and skateboards to avoid carbon emissions.
She signed on to the project because she wanted to approach the serious environmental topic
in a happy and silly way.
She also hoped that The Great Travel Hack would open viewers' minds to cleaner ways
to get from place to place.
Even before The Big Bang Theory wrapped its last episodes, Cuoco was already planning
the next phase of her career.
In October 2017, she launched a production company called Yes, Norman Productions, which
was named after her rescue pit bull.
In 2018, she told Cosmopolitan,
"I want to be a full-on girl boss.
I’ve been in the business so long, and I’ve worked with the best.
I don't let people mess with me.
I want to show girls out there that you can be cool, wear yoga clothes, and run your own
f---ing company."
She added,
"You don’t have to be a guy in a suit.
I want this to be a big company.
I want to be sitting down a few years from now and have so many projects going.
That's what I’m excited about."
She kicked things off by producing The Flight Attendant, an upcoming HBO Max series based
on a book of the same name.
She'll also star as the main character, who wakes up hungover in a hotel room with a dead
body next to her.
If that intriguing premise is any indication of the future, we bet Kaley Cuoco will continue
doing great things for years to come!
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