‘Oh, my God, I’m famous!’ ” Cuoco says, video chatting from her Los Angeles home. “I’ve been on this slight uphill trajectory my whole career, just slowly working, working, working. I was always kind of here.”

And she’s right. Having appeared on various television series throughout the 1990s and early aughts, she had amassed 25 IMDb credits by the time she landed her first true “break” in 2002 on the three-season comedy “8 Simple Rules.”

Being on sets from a young age, Cuoco posits, was a more useful education than any traditional acting class. “I took a few [classes] when I was very, very young, and it just was not for me,” she remembers. 

“The whole school of it was just being lucky enough to be on sets and being around adults at a young age, and having a time when I had to be at work and when I had to be quiet [and] memorize my lines. And going to the parties and the premieres—those were my proms.”