John Mark "Johnny" Galecki (born April 30, 1975 in Bree, Belgium - his father was stationed abroad with the Air Force at the time) is an American actor who is famous for playing experimental physicist Leonard Hofstadter on the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory and to a lesser extent David Healy on Roseanne. Both shows are considered some of the highest rated and most watched American live-action TV programs of their respective original airing runs.
Johnny has also made appearances in a number of movies, including as a child in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
After 2010 he has attempted to launch several shows as a producer, though none has yet found major success. He is also friendly with a number of rock musicians, particularly My Chemical Romance and Badflower, and has occasionally appeared on stage as a guest guitarist or drummer. Also plays the cello, which was featured a few times on TBBT.
Since the ending of TBBT and the cancellation of the Roseanne revival, Galecki made a brief return in the spin-off show The Conners. Since then, he has been out of the limelight, focused on raising his young son.
Selected Filmography:
- National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - Rusty
- Roseanne / The Conners - David Healy
- Suicide Kings - Ira Reder
- The Opposite of Sex - Jason
- I Know What You Did Last Summer - Max
- Vanilla Sky - Peter Brown
- My Boys - Trouty
- The Big Bang Theory - Leonard Hofstadter
- Entourage - Himself
- Rings - Professor Gabriel
Tropes:
- Former Child Star: Averted. While he began acting on stage at the age of seven and struggled slightly when living apart from his family as a teenager to pursue a film/TV career, he never went "off the rails" and suffered only a brief break in his career after Roseanne before re-establishing himself in theater and then transitioning to TBBT.
- He Cleans Up Nicely: He tends to play unkempt or poorly dressed characters but can be quite dapper in real life as the image above shows.
- Irony as She Is Cast:
- While his TBBT character Leonard is fond of meat dishes, Galecki is a vegetarian much like his TBBT co-stars Cuoco and Bialik.
- In spite of his TBBT character Leonard being a CalTech physicist, Galecki dropped out of high school and never attended college.
- Minor Living Alone: As a child actor, Galecki's parents moved to LA with him so he could audition, then moved back to Chicago, leaving him alone in Burbank at the age of 14. To commute to work, he got a motorcycle and a helmet to hide his face so people wouldn't notice how young he was.
- Romance on the Set: Dated Sara Gilbert while they were on Roseannenote and Kaley Cuoco early in the run of TBBT. In both cases the characters went on to marry after the actors had broken up.
