Simon Helberg is a sharp supporting player, particularly good at making an awkward man's confidence look misplaced. We rate his comic precision; the repeated nerd parts are a narrower use of his abilities than his musical work suggests.
Fi1m perspective
As Moist in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008), Simon Helberg gets about four lines and lands all of them. We laughed at Moist, and wished Helberg had been given a little more to say. His performance is a good reason to notice the supporting cast of Joss Whedon's web musical, even with Neil Patrick Harris carrying the piece. It is a useful place to begin with an actor whose most familiar character has had rather more time to introduce himself.
His early work included web sketches with Derek Waters before Howard Wolowitz in The Big Bang Theory (2007) made him widely familiar. The series ran until 2019, making his talent for exaggerated confidence particularly easy to recognise. Its performers are sharp, and the company is agreeable, but the jokes about social awkwardness too often repeat themselves. That is a limitation of the programme, not sufficient reason to dismiss the actor. The temptation is to treat Howard as the whole of what Helberg can offer.
The film roles give a better indication of where else to look. In Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), he plays Cosmé McMoon opposite Meryl Streep and draws on his own piano training. He brings a practical skill to a role that also asks for physical comedy and attention to character, a combination we would like to see used more often. Leos Carax's Annette (2021), in which he plays the Conductor, gives us another reason to resist filing him away as a sitcom specialist.
His expressive face and physical comedy suit those awkward supporting parts; the danger is that casting him as another nerd makes the joke familiar before he has spoken. We would like more work that needs his musicianship and gives him something beyond social discomfort to play. Try Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog if Howard has already settled the matter for you.
Biography
Simon Helberg is an American actor, comedian and musician. He trained at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and began his career with guest roles and sketch comedy, including a stint as a cast member on MADtv in 2002–2003.
He is best known for playing Howard Wolowitz in the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019), for which he won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. His film roles include Old School (2003), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), A Serious Man (2009) and Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), the last of which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. He played Moist in the web series Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008).
Helberg wrote, directed and starred in the film We'll Never Have Paris (2014) alongside his wife, actress Jocelyn Towne, niece of screenwriter Robert Towne. His parents are actor Sandy Helberg and casting director Harriet Helberg.
