Not Blossom: Mayim Bialik Got Her Big Break In This Classic '80s Tearjerker
Welcome to The Big Break, a column where The List staff looks back at how this week's headline-grabbing star made their claim to fame.
Of all of the most memorable and popular sitcoms airing in the late 2000s, "The Big Bang Theory" stands apart for so many different reasons. Revered for its nerdy-first sarcastic comedy, loveable characters played by talented actors are truly the heart of the series. Mayim Bialik made her first appearance as Amy Farrah Fowler during the Season 3 finale, but she had been working in Hollywood decades before the show's premiere.
While she was most known for her leading role in the '90s sitcom "Blossom" (which was referenced in the first season of "The Big Bang Theory" ahead of Bialik's casting), her big break had been a captivating role two years prior. Playing the 11-year-old version of Bette Midler's character, C.C., in the 1988 drama "Beaches," the young actor found herself in her most captivating role yet.
Bialik has had quite the transformation since this role, but there's no mistaking her, even dressed-up as Midler's mini-me. The "Hocus Pocus" actor told People in a 2024 interview that she saw Bialik's potential from the role, even going further to claim, "Sometimes I feel that she was responsible for the success of that movie. I don't think that they could even believe how similar to me in quality she [was], how much like my quality she managed to capture."
Mayim Bialik has fond memories from the set of Beaches
While the neuroscientist and actor Mayim Bialik hasn't had a long stint on a sitcom since "The Big Bang Theory" concluded in 2019, she still remains active in Hollywood. Upon the 30th anniversary of "Beaches" in 2018, the actor shared some personal anecdotes from the set in an article for her website, Grok Nation.
The role wasn't without a fair share of supervision, as she explained how, "The director, Garry Marshall, and Bette had to approve everything about me for the movie. Bette didn't like how elaborate the initial choreography was of my singing/dancing number; she herself re-did it and taught me the moves you see in the final movie." The movie was also filmed during a particularly warm summer. Bialik recalled the difficulty of performing in her red curly wig (which inspired a dye job during her university years) and wrote, "... early mornings on set sitting in the wig chair for a solid hour and make up for another hour or so coupled with long days in the heat were hard for a 12-year-old — I needed to nap!"
Indeed, despite living a life of luxury today, Bialik managed to have a pretty average childhood despite her unconventional career. In a June 2026 interview with "Second Thought With Suzy Weiss," the "Blossom" actor said, "But for my personality, I think a lot of normal came from my parents being very fastidious about academics, being very fastidious about me not getting a swelled head ... I still did chores, I still did homework. I still had to have all those things." Luckily, her real-life aptitude and levelheadedness would give way to one of her most beloved roles.