Everything you need to know about the Big Bang Theory star, who is also playing God in a new Broadway show.
Jim Parsons is the warm, well-mannered, Houston-raised gent who, at 42, has spent the past eight years atop CBS’s prime-time-pummeling sitcom The Big Bang Theory. The show’s record-breaking ratings are in large part thanks to the self-described theater geek, who makes his physicist character, Sheldon Cooper, endearing in spite of a social aversion, a Star Trek obsession, and a superiority complex. (You try charming nearly 20 million viewers with a smarty-pants line about Newton’s gravitational constant.) His work has led to four Emmys, one Golden Globe, and a trio of Broadway roles—the latest being in An Act of God, the humorous one-act play written by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart alum David Javerbaum, which opens on May 28 at Studio 54. In anticipation of his upcoming stage project, and *The Big Bang Theory’*s season finale next month, a scroll of certainties about the face of America’s favorite comedy series.
HIS SECRET acting weapons are note cards, on which he has handwritten Sheldon’s dense scientific dialogue for each of the 180 or so episodes. For An Act of God, Parsons guesses he is memorizing about 200 cards of divine dialogue (his character delivers God’s word), some containing “the tiniest serial-killer” scrawl.
HIS I.Q. is classified information, known only by his mother, who had Parsons tested in the first or second grade and did not consider it appropriate to share the results with her son. But Sheldon’s I.Q., 187, is public knowledge.
HIS MOTHER, Judy, and his three-years-younger sister, Julie, teach the same first-grade class—his mother in the morning, and his sister in the afternoon—in the Texas district where Parsons attended school.
IN TRIBUTE to his late father, Milton, the former president of a plumbing-supply company who died in a car accident in 2001, Parsons traced his paternal ancestry, discovering that his sixth-great-grandfather was Louis-François Trouard, the architect to King Louis XV of France.
HE HAS homes in his two favorite cities, Los Angeles and New York, which he shares with his partner of about 13 years, graphic designer Todd Spiewak, and two dogs—Otis, a Maltese, and Rufus, a Shih Tzu.
UPON RISING at four or five A.M., his morning routine involves several cups of coffee (with Coffee-mate and stevia), a protein drink, oatmeal, and then a four- or five-mile run on the treadmill, plus training sessions three times a week.
HE CONSIDERS himself “a huge Lena Dunham fan”—his fondness grew while following her Instagram feed and escalated once he watched her HBO series, Girls.
A SPORTS enthusiast and Fantasy Football player (his last team name was Rufus Barks), Parsons is pen pals with Canadian professional tennis player Genie Bouchard. Last summer, she invited Parsons to London to watch her play at Wimbledon. He sat with her mom and her coach. In turn, Parsons hosted Bouchard on The Big Bang Theory set, in L.A.