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.”
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.
Don Knotts – The Andy Griffith Show
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.
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.
Tatiana Maslany – Orphan Black
Tatiana Maslany managed to not only play a number of different clones in the show “Orphan Black,” but she did it in a way that made each of them unique and memorable. Cosima, the bookworm of the group, enjoyed reading and researching and let the other clones handle the intense stuff.
Maslany had to get plenty of makeup done to turn her into the dowdy Cosima, but she's quite the stunner in real life. Maslany also lent her voice to the audiobooks of the “Hunger Games” series, reading the Katniss Everdeen parts. She's gaining awards faster than you might think and has even had a nom for a Primetime Emmy Award in 2018.