Melissa Rauch Biography

Melissa Ivy Rauch (born June 23, 1980) is an American actress and comedian. She is known for playing Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Early life

Rauch was born in Marlboro Township, New Jersey, to parents Susan and David Rauch. She has a brother, Ben. The family is Jewish. She developed an interest in acting while attending Marlboro High School. Rauch graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City in 2002.

Career

Some of Rauch's early work was as a regular contributor to VH1's Best Week Ever television show.

In 2009, Rauch began playing the recurring role of Bernadette Rostenkowski, a co-worker of Penny who began to date Howard Wolowitz, in the third season of TV's The Big Bang Theory. The following season her character became Howard's fiance and Rauch was promoted to a series regular. The characters married in the season five finale. In December 2011, Rauch and fellow cast members of The Big Bang Theory received the first of four nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.

Other acting credits include True Blood (on which she had a recurring role in 2010 as Summer, a girl who likes Hoyt), The Office, the American remake of the Australian TV series Kath & Kim, Wright v Wrong, and the film I Love You, Man.

Rauch is also part of the cast of the comedic stage show The Realest Real Housewives with Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael, Jessica St. Clair and Danielle Schneider. The show began running at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in 2011.

Rauch co-wrote and co-produced the film The Bronze, in which she starred as Hope Annabelle Greggory, a bronze medal-winning gymnast clinging to her glory days of 12 years earlier. It opened the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Variety said, "Rauch, who co-wrote the screenplay with her husband Winston, has never carried a film before. But she delivers the best breakthrough comedic performance by an actress since Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids." Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film in September 2015.

Personal life

Rauch is married to writer Winston Rauch (n Beigel), who collaborated with her on The Miss Education of Jenna Bush and other projects. Rauch announced that she was pregnant on July 11, 2017, and disclosed that she had a miscarriage previously.

Rauch modeled the voices of Bernadette after her parents: the "sweet, high-pitched purr" is modeled after her mother, while the "eerie, haranguing imitation" of Mrs. Wolowitz is modeled after her father. Both are "very different" from Rauch's real voice.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006	Delirious	Megan
2009	I Love You, Man	Woman Jogger Yelling at Sidney
2009	The Condom Killer	Audra	Short
2013	In Lieu of Flowers	Carrie
2014	Are You Here	Marie
2015	The Bronze	Hope Annabelle Greggory	Also writer
2016	Ice Age: Collision Course	Francine (voice)
2016	Flock of Dudes	Jamie
2017	Batman and Harley Quinn	Harley Quinn (voice)	Direct-to-video

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2007	12 Miles of Bad Road	Bethany	3 episodes: "The Dirty White Girl" (season 1: episode 2) "Collateral Verbiage" (season 1: episode 4) "Moonshadow" (season 1: episode 6)
2008-09	Kath & Kim	Tina	Season 1 (recurring; 6 episodes)
2009-present	The Big Bang Theory	Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz	Season 3 (recurring; 5 episodes) Season 4-present (series regular)
2010	The Office	Cathy Duke	1 episode
2010	True Blood	Summer	Season 3 (recurring; 6 episodes)
2010	Wright vs. Wrong	Daisy Cake	TV movie
2014	Jake and the Never Land Pirates	First-Mate Mollie (voice)	1 episode "Smee-erella"
2014	Teenage Fairytale Dropouts	Miss Macabre	1 episode "Something Wicked This Way Substitutes"
2015	Sofia the First	Fairy Tizzy (voice)	1 episode
2015	Scooby-Doo! and the Beach Beastie	Kiki (voice)	TV Movie
2017	Star vs. the Forces of Evil	Baby (voice)	1 episode
2017	Marvel's Ant-Man	The Wasp (voice)	1 episode