Jim Parsons

Parsons spent years in off-Broadway productions and smaller TV roles before the right pilot landed. By his own account, he'd auditioned for 15 to 30 shows that never made it to air. The Big Bang Theory changed that. He's said he heard something in the dialogue rhythm of the script that clicked immediately. Chuck Lorre reportedly liked the audition enough to call Parsons back for a second one just to make sure the performance was repeatable. The show ran 12 seasons. Four Emmys and a Golden Globe later, Sheldon Cooper became one of the most replicated sitcom archetypes on television.

Forbes named Parsons the world's highest-paid TV actor from 2015 through 2018, with earnings hitting $27.5 million in 2018. The Big Bang Theory ended in 2019 with Parsons pulling around $900,000 per episode. What followed was quieter than expected. He's said quality offers dried up after the show wrapped. The roles he took (The Boys in the Band, Hollywood, Spoiler Alert) were deliberately gay-themed and far from Sheldon's orbit. He married Todd Spiewak in 2017 after 15 years together. Young Sheldon ran seven seasons with Parsons narrating and executive producing, which kept him in the franchise without returning to it.

Parsons and Todd Spiewak have been together since a blind date in 2002. They married in 2017 at the Rainbow Room in New York. Parsons came out publicly as gay in 2012, though he'd been quietly naming Spiewak in Emmy speeches since at least 2010. Sheldon Cooper was straight on screen. A gay man from Houston, whose father ran a plumbing company, played him for 12 seasons. That gap between the character and the actor says something about the craft. Probably something about the weirdness of casting too.