Mayim Hoya Bialik is best known for her lead role as Blossom Russo in the early-1990s NBC television sitcom Blossom. Bialik was born in California to first generation Jewish American parents who were documentary film makers and teachers. She played the young Bette Midler in "Beaches" and also had guest roles on some of television's most beloved shows of the 1980s and 1990s, such as MacGuyver, Webster, and The Facts of Life. She also appeared in Woody Allen's "Don't Drink the Water" in 1994, and has more recently appeared in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. She has been the guest on numerous talk shows, including The Arsenio Hall Show, The Tonight Show, and on Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien's earliest forays into late-night.

Bialik earned a BS from UCLA in 2000 in Neuroscience and Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA in 2007. Her thesis in psychoneuroendocrinology examined Hypothalamic Secretions and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in adolescents with Prader-Willi syndrome.

Bialik is married and has two sons, born in 2005 and 2008. She lives in Southern California and enjoys cooking vegan food, practicing attachment parenting and natural family living, and studying Judaism.