Jim Parsons is glad he was a "late bloomer" in his career

He said: "I wouldn't have been able to handle [fame, if it happened earlier]. I was a late bloomer in some ways. Not that I was ever irresponsible... I wasn't a tragic case, but I wouldn't have known how to compute all this kind of stuff at all. Even just being on set in that pressured environment, or I would have made it very pressured for myself.

"I know I would have. I wouldn't know what to do, never mind any public recognition. Dear God. The amount of things I know I got to do in life that no one cared about ... Normal doesn't always matter anymore, it seems to me. Things get taken out of context. One old image and suddenly you find you're explaining the whole reason you're allowed to walk the earth."

And Jim feels lucky he had already settled down with now-husband Todd Spiewak before he found fame.

Speaking on David Tennant Does A Podcast With..., he added: "If there’s two things I’m grateful for it’s, number one, that kind of success hitting later in life for me because I’d been through a lot of other things already. The other huge one, and probably the biggest one, is to have already fallen in love and already have a partner in this going forward. For many years, I worked with Kaley Cuoco who was 20 when we shot the pilot. She’s happy and successful and married to a great guy. But watching her as a young woman and dating people without even knowing what was going on with her, I thought, 'That’s gotta be really hard.' I think that would’ve been hard for me too."

David Tennant Does A Podcast With... is available on Apple, Spotify and all podcast providers.