PASADENA, Calif. –For years people would tap Danica McKellar on the shoulder and ask, “Aren’t you that little girl on ‘The Wonder Years?’ ”
Though she WAS that little girl on “The Wonder Years,” all that changed in an instant. After six seasons on the popular show, McKellar was ready for college.
“I took four years off to attend UCLA,” she said during breakfast at Pasadena restaurant. “My plan was to be a film major because I loved acting and had been doing it for so long, I thought I should learn the rest of it.
“And I took a math class as part of my general requirements. It was a calculus course which wasn’t really required, but I’d been in AP calculus in high school, and I was intimidated by the idea for some reason even though I’d done well in high school. I was buying into the stereotype,” she said.
“But I took the plunge and did it and fell completely in love with mathematics. I was floored at how well I was doing and couldn’t believe that I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it and was at the top of my class from the first test,” she said.
“And I really gained an identity for myself and self-worth that was completely separate from Hollywood, which was so important for me.”
She went on to earn the highest score in her class of 163 people on her midterm. “The scores were on the board. The high score was 22, which was mine, the rest were 15 and below,” she says.
“This one day someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, aren’t you that girl who got the 22?’ It hit me. ‘Oh, my goodness. This is me. THIS is me, not a combination of sound effects and music and lighting and a great script and all the rest of it. This is really me. And it was intoxicating. I knew I needed to go down that path and take a break from Hollywood and find myself.”
She even managed a coup that rarely happens in the field of mathematics. She contributed to original research that proved a new theorem.
“So I have a theorem named after me, which is something you usually do when you’re getting your Ph.D. After I got my bachelor’s of science, I missed acting and I missed communicating with people.”
While she enjoyed the research, she felt isolated, she says.
“I really missed acting. At that point I’d already joined the Shakespeare group on campus. I was doing plays and stuff and I really wanted to get back to it.”
It took her three years to land a part, a juicy role in “The West Wing,” but she’s definitely baaaaaack. McKellar, 41, is starring in her second Hallmark movie, “Wedding Bells,” part of the network’s June weddings series, premiering June 3. And, no, she doesn’t play the bride.
Though she’s been a bride twice (she and her first husband divorced when her 5 year-old son was 1 1/2 ) McKellar plays the maid of honor who colludes with the best man to save a wedding that is about to go under.
But McKellar hasn’t forgotten Pythagoras. In 2000 she addressed Congress about the importance of women in mathematics, and five years later she was approached about writing a book on the subject — “Math Doesn’t Suck.”
“I recommend to ANY actor: have something else that you also love that you also do that makes money. For me, it’s math books because it keeps you sane and keeps you from needing the next job to happen at a certain point. And you can choose; you don’t have to take everything that comes to you,” said McKellar.
