Penelope Hofstadter is a fictional character from the 2007-2019 American CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, portrayed by actress Kaley Cuoco.

She is the primary female character in the series, befriending her neighbors Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and her future husband Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), two physicists employed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

[6] She has full confidence in pseudoscientific concepts such as horoscopes, psychics, and Voodoo, which has led to repeated mocking from both Sheldon and Leonard along with criticisms of their accuracy.

[6][7] In contrast to the rest of the group, Penny is neither well-educated nor savvy in a specific field and is generally somewhat dim-witted, but she has great social skills and is more streetwise than her neighbors.

[episode needed] When she is expressing feelings of anger or frustration, other characters have compared her to The Hulk, a "rabid wolverine", and "killer robots".

[clarification needed][14] She also hit a Mercedes in a parking lot[15] and knocked the side-view mirror off Bernadette's car; not leaving a note in either incident.

Then, in "The Locomotive Manipulation", Leonard declines Amy's suggestion that the group spends a weekend in Napa Valley, leading to this exchange: A number of episodes depict Penny's assimilation of nerd culture through her time spent with the men, and she has quoted some science fiction shows (like Star Trek) and movies (Star Wars).

In episodes such as "The Apology Insufficiency", "The Dead Hooker Juxtaposition", "The Wheaton Recurrence", and "The Love Car Displacement", she makes casual references to Star Trek.

[20] In "The Bakersfield Expedition", Penny, Amy and Bernadette read some of the men's comics, believing there is nothing interesting in them, only to get into a heated argument about whether or not only Thor could wield his enchanted hammer Mjolnir.

In the second-season episode "The Financial Permeability", when Penny is short on money, Leonard pays for her share of a group dinner, which causes Raj and Howard to joke that they would get free food too if they wore skintight jeans and a tank top.

In the seventh season "The Convention Conundrum", when the women go out for drinks and ponder their own maturity, and Penny questions the significance of that trait, Bernadette replies that it would mean that their check would be split three ways.

[16] Penny's financial situation radically improves when she begins working as a sales representative at the pharmaceutical company that employs Bernadette, in the eighth-season episode "The Locomotion Interruption".

In the ninth-season episode "The Big Bear Precipitation", Penny reveals she hates her job as a representative but sticks with it because she still has large debts to pay and also does not want to go back to waitressing or acting.

[25] Her work at The Cheesecake Factory was initially meant to be a temporary job for her desired profession as an actress,[citation needed] although her expectations are somewhat high and naive at the beginning.

She regularly goes to castings but is most often unsuccessful or finds the role to be quite different from what she expected, as when a cat food commercial audition was actually for a pornographic film.

In the season one episode "The Loobenfeld Decay", she is cast in a production of Rent, and in "The Terminator Decoupling" she refers to another of her roles as "Anne Frank in a theater above a bowling alley".

Frustrated with her acting career, in the fifth-season premiere, she briefly considers returning to Nebraska until landing a part in a commercial for hemorrhoid cream.

In this episode, Sheldon, who attended the show along with Leonard and Amy, is impressed with Penny's ability to memorize lines despite not remembering customers' orders as a waitress.

She is devastated when her scene is cut, but later decides it is time to focus solely on acting; she quits her job at The Cheesecake Factory to devote herself to becoming an actress.

Although Penny occasionally teases Raj for his inability to speak to her, she is sympathetic and kind towards him and, as with Sheldon, she almost always overlooks his idiosyncrasies and appreciates that his intentions are good.

In the first-season episode "The Fuzzy Boots Corollary", Penny describes her approach after a failed relationship: she picks up an attractive man to have rebound sex with over the course of a 36-hour weekend, then leaves him.

[30] Although the date is successful, Penny becomes worried after she lies to Leonard about graduating from community college (it is mentioned in a later episode, "The Cohabitation Formulation", that she was enrolled in one, but dropped out).

The next day, bored with the conference, Penny accepts a ride back to Los Angeles from Professor Glenn, Bernadette's tall and attractive ex-boyfriend.

In "The Date Night Variable", Raj shows up unannounced at a private dinner of Penny and Leonard's, and inserts himself into their discussion of where their relationship is headed.

In the "Higgs Boson Observation", Sheldon hires grad student Alex Jensen to review his childhood journals for any potential ideas that might win him a Nobel Prize.

In "The Bon Voyage Reaction", Penny copes with Leonard leaving for a summer science assignment in Europe, resolving that they are more secure in their relationship.

[40] Although the two characters sometimes clash, and Penny is frequently irritated by Sheldon's obstinacy and lack of social awareness, she developed a conspicuous soft spot for him as the series progressed.

[45] In the fifth-season episode "The Pulled Groin Extrapolation", after Penny quickly grabs and eats the last dumpling of a group dinner after a brief disagreement over who should get it, Sheldon makes the sarcastic comment, "I've seen pictures of your mother.

In the sixth-season episode "The Parking Spot Escalation" Penny mentions to Bernadette and Amy that her sister gave her her first ever bikini wax using melted Crayolas and duct tape.

In "The Bachelor Party Corrosion", Penny tells Bernadette, Amy and viewers that her sister was heavily pregnant at her own wedding, and her water broke at the start of the father-daughter dance.