James Joseph Parsons is an American actor and producer. From 2007 to 2019, Parsons played Sheldon Cooper on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory. He has received several awards for his performance, including four Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Actor in a Comedy and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Comedy-Dramatic or Comedy Ensemble. In 2018, Forbes estimated his annual salary at $ 26.5 million and named him the highest-paid television actor in the world. Parsons made his Broadway debut in 2011 as Tommy Boatwright in The Normal Heart, for which he received the Drama Desk Award for Best Performance. He reconstituted the role in a film adaptation of the play and it received a seventh Emmy nomination, this time in the Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie category.

He earned two straight Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for his performance as Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, and he has gotten recognition from a number of other award organizations. In 2019, he starred in the biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile as Larry Simpson.