It's not the same actress, however that's a surprisingly astute observation anyway.

Howard's mother is played by longtime character actress Carol Ann Susi. However Melissa Rauch, who plays Howard's wife Bernadette, says there's a bit of Mrs. Wolowitz in her.

"I come from a house of screamers, very similar to the Wolowitz family," she said in a "New York Post" interview last year. "Mrs. Wolowitz sounds very similar to my father."

Bernadette's own voice on the show is distinctive as well -- high-pitched and soft. Rauch said that she looked to the other half of her gene pool for inspiration there.

"My mom has a very high-pitched voice that's not exactly Bernadette's voice, but it's similar." One of the alterations she made was to strip out the New Jersey accent.

Mistaking Susi's voice for Rauch's is also understandable because, of course, it's a running joke on the show that we never actually see Howard's mother's face. Throughout the show's eight seasons (and still counting), she has just been a loud and disapproving voice from upstairs (save for a few glimpses of her elsewhere, such as at Howard and Bernadette's wedding, where we see her from a distance).

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