He’s smug, he’s self-important, and he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, but anybody who tuned in to “The Andy Griffith Show” (which meant everyone) had Barney Fife pegged from the start: an incompetent goof.
The word nerd wasn’t in wide use during the show’s run, and he didn’t have the brainy activities most often associated with the term, but still. Don Knotts went on to be a huge actor, appearing in dozens of famous movies. He earned five Emmy Awards from his time with Andy Griffith and couldn’t keep the ladies away – he married three times, his final being with Frances Yarborough until his death in 2006.
Pauley Perrette – NCIS
With the look of a cool goth chick and the bubbly personality of a prom queen, Abby Sciuto is hard to classify. However, she has plenty of nerd in her thanks to her triple major with full honors and her master's degrees in criminology and forensic science.
Pauley has had plenty of cool roles, such as Lois Lane in “Superman vs. The Elite” and she also had a main role in “Murder One.” She's even given her voice to one cool video game, “Blade Runner” in 1997. This actress is also an entrepreneur, co-owning Donna Bell's Bake Shop, which is named after her mother. If you're in the Manhattan area, look it up.
Melissa Rauch – The Big Bang Theory
Melissa Rauch's character, blonde and brainy Bernadette, first shows up in season three. She's one of Penny's coworkers, and she and Howard quickly hit it off. She was a series regular starting in season four, and she's just as nerdy as Howard. Rauch might not look like a nerd in real life, but she does tend to nerd out.
She played wild villain Harley Quinn in the animated “Batman and Harley Quinn,” and got to appear in the vampire show “True Blood” in 2010. Bernadette was no slouch when it came to the looks department, but Rauch, out of her character, takes it up another notch, too.
John Francis Daley – Freaks and Geeks
Surviving high school at all can seem like an impossible task when you're staring down the barrel of four full years. Surviving when you're nerdy and anti-social is even harder. Such is the case for Sam Weir, played by John Francis Daley, who was labeled “Sam Queer” by bullies and stuck to comedy shows for his getaway.
John Francis Daley is now not only an actor but a musician as well, playing keyboards and singing in the band Dayplayer. He's also a screenwriter, putting pen to paper for movies including “Horrible Bosses,” “Vacation” (which he also directed), and even “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”
Rainn Wilson – The Office
Nerds are sometimes the smartest person in the room. Other times they think they're the smartest and won't shut up about it. Such is the case with Dwight Schrute, everyone's favorite punching bag on the legendary sitcom “The Office.” Rainn Wilson did such a good job as this dorky doofus that he had to immediately branch out into other roles when he could to avoid being typecast forever.
Those roles include providing the voice of Superman villain Lex Luthor in numerous animated films, appearing as a professor in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” and violent crime fighter Crimson Bolt in “Super.” Such versatility is quite the cool trait.