Kaley Cuoco has been on TV for most of her life, including guest spots in the 1990s on such shows as “My So-Called Life,” “Northern Exposure” and “Ellen” (where she played a young version of star Ellen DeGeneres). Her breakthrough was playing Bridget Hennessy, the daughter of TV icons John Ritter and Katey Sagal’s characters, on the ABC series “8 Simple Rules … for Dating My Teenage Daughter” — but then came Cuoco’s Big Bang.

After 12 years of playing Penny on “The Big Bang Theory,” which became TV’s most-watched sitcom and ultimately earned her $1 million per episode, Cuoco was in the same space a lot of TV stars are in after the end of their long-running shows. Do you take a break? Tackle movies? Attempt to top that once-in-a-lifetime TV mountaintop?

Read the whole article at Variety.com