French kissing Avril Lavigne, doing the bolero with broken bones, and
formulating new mathematical theorems! Is there anything Danica McKellar can't do?"
Danica McKellar wasn't the only child star in her family. In fact,
her younger sister Crystal even appeared alongside her on The Wonder Years, as she
played the recurring role of Becky Slater. Interestingly enough, Crystal landed the
part after losing out on the one she initially auditioned for: Winnie Cooper. That's right,
Danica beat out her own sister for her most iconic role. As Danica recalled to ABC in 2014,
"It came down to the two of us. They ended up hiring me,
but they said they loved Crystal and they meant it. They said,
'We're gonna write a part if this goes to series,' and they wrote a part for her."
As Wonder Years fans surely remember, Becky had an unrequited crush on young Kevin Arnold,
which she expressed by terrorizing him. According to Danica,
Crystal wasn't terribly different from her tough-girl persona. As she explained,
"I remember in fifth grade, there were these boys who were teasing me,
and Crystal went and kicked them in the shins for me. She's a lawyer now. She's
channeling that aggression in a more healthy way now!"
Winnie Cooper is an unforgettable character, but nowadays Danica McKellar is more associated
with her work in Hallmark Channel movies. As of 2022, she's starred in 16 of them,
with seven of those being Christmas movies. As she gushed to TV Insider in 2021,
"I love doing programming that makes people feel good. And also to kind of
model behaviors and traditions and things that might inspire families to be more connected.
And that to me really feels like a gift to the world, in addition to just fun entertainment."
McKellar eventually left Hallmark for an exclusive deal with the GAC Network, but that doesn't mean
that she was unsatisfied with her former employer in any way. As she explained to Us Weekly,
"Part of it was because I had the opportunity to do a multi-picture deal,
which I hadn't done at Hallmark, and also not just multi-picture,
but also really being a producer, really helping to develop these stories from the beginning."
In 2014, McKellar competed on the 18th season of Dancing With the Stars. As the season progressed,
she was hit with some unfortunate news, as she learned that she had a broken rib. But she refused
to throw in the towel and instead insisted on soldiering on. To compensate for her injury,
her partner Val Chmerkovskiy was forced to make some adjustments to their routines.
But despite those modifications, the pair wound up eliminated shortly thereafter.
Nevertheless, McKellar took it all in stride. As she admitted to ABC News,
"It's been absolutely amazing. [...] You never know when you're going to get
eliminated. So you just have to live in the moment. It's a good life lesson, actually."
"This has been the most challenging thing I've ever done."
Anyone who's even seen Danica McKellar on TV can attest to the fact that she
keeps herself in tip-top shape. As she wrote on her website in 2013,
"Yes, I care about how I look and staying fit & healthy.
No, I don't think that makes me superficial. And yes, it takes work."
McKellar's preferred form of exercise is yoga, so much so that she released her
own yoga and meditation video called Daily Dose of Dharma. In the video,
she demonstrates the yoga, while her mom offers meditation instruction. During the early days
of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, McKellar took to Instagram to tell her followers,
"Yoga has been a lifesaver for me during this time, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Granted, sometimes I'm doing it against the sounds of nerf battles between my husband & the kids,
but it still makes a HUGE difference in how I feel."
If you've somehow never seen Danica McKellar on The Wonder Years or Hallmark,
maybe you saw her when she turned up in Avril Lavigne's 2013 music video for her song "Rock
N Roll." In an homage to the 1995 film Tank Girl, Lavigne and McKellar are driving in a
post-apocalyptic wasteland when McKellar leans over and gives the Canadian rocker a full-on
kiss. While they make out, Lavigne can be heard in a voiceover in an homage to The Wonder Years.
"It was the first kiss for both of us. We never really talked about it afterward,
but I think about the events of that day again and again."
After shooting the video, McKellar gushed about the experience on social media, as she tweeted,
"Just had the best time shooting [Avril Lavigne's]
new video. And she is so sweet and fun! Made me feel like a rock star."
She also talked about the experience on Good Morning America, as she admitted,
"[It was] sexy, edgy, stuff I usually don't get offered, so this was really fun."
And this wasn't the first time McKellar has showcased her skills in a music video,
as she can also be seen playing the cello in Debbie Gibson's 1989 clip for "No More Rhyme."
After The Wonder Years ended its run in 1993, a then-18-year-old Danica McKellar
put her Hollywood career on hold and headed to college. She went on to graduate from UCLA
with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics. While she was still an undergrad, she was
the co-author of a scientific paper that led to the formulation of a new mathematical theorem.
McKellar eventually combined her passions for math and acting when she portrayed a woman
claiming to have solved a complex mathematical puzzle in a production of the play Proof at
the San Diego Repertory Theater. When she auditioned, she was asked how much she knew
about math. As the theater's artistic director, Sam Woodhouse, recalled to The New York Times,
"She went into a five-minute explanation. Which was a stunning and mystifying five minutes."
It shouldn't surprise you at this point to learn that McKellar has been passionate
about math and science her whole life. As she admitted to USA Today in 2018,
"I was a total STEM kid from the time I was born. I can't ever remember a time that I didn't want
to not only learn, but be challenged. I think that's why I love math; it challenges my brain."
McKellar is now eager to share her passion with young women who may not have previously
considered career paths in a scientific field. As she explained to Fatherly in 2018,
"I want to inspire girls not to aspire to be that cute girl that
takes selfies. They can aspire to be the cute young woman who's wearing a
fabulous suit and heels bought with the money made at a fabulous job."
Part of that effort has been shooting down the stereotype
that science is only for uncool kids. As McKellar declared to USA Today,
"I want to make over the perception of who 'smart kids' and those who love math actually are."
"I can struggle through a math problem, think I can't do it,
then realize how to do it. And you get this math high and its that confidence."
In her pursuit to popularize mathematics,
Danica McKellar has written several books on the subject. Her efforts thus far include
math-themed children's books aimed at toddlers, with such cute titles as Bathtime Mathtime and
Goodnight, Numbers. The McKellar Math Brand also includes some publications focused towards teens,
including Math Doesn't Suck, Kiss My Math, and the geometry-inspired Girls Get Curves.
These books are all part of a plan to tackle the common misperception that math is difficult
or scary. As McKellar explained to The Children's Book Review in 2020,
"I set out to change that mindset and make it entertaining, but educational as well.
By writing books, I can reach a lot more kids all over the world. [...] I love to use this outlet,
especially to encourage young girls. [...] My hope is for girls to gain confidence and
to show the importance of math, no matter what they decide to do when they grow up,
whether it be a teacher or an actress or a mathematician for NASA."
When one of McKellar's books was chosen for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library,
which donates free books to children,
it led her to pitch a movie idea to the country music icon. As a result, McKellar
then wound up starring alongside Parton in the Hallmark holiday movie Christmas at Dollywood.
"I found myself saying to her, 'I would've worn heels,' which is the dorkiest thing I
could've possibly said. And she goes, 'Oh, you're wearing heels,
honey.' And I realized, I was standing on my toes."
In 2012, Danica McKellar divorced her husband Mike Verta after just
three years of marriage. The exes now share custody of their son,
who was just 2 years old at the time of the split. In a post on her website,
McKellar opened up about her complicated feelings about this episode in her life, as she wrote,
"The end of a marriage has got to be one of the saddest events one can experience – I’ve heard
that the pain is second only to an actual death in the family, and that sounds about right. However,
I am so grateful that my relationship with my ex [...] has been nothing but amicable,
and that this process seems like it will be as smooth as can be hoped for."
During an interview with Fatherly, McKellar laid out the two key pieces
of advice she wanted to share with anyone in the midst of a divorce:
"Number one: Don't badmouth each other or the new partners ever, ever. That just puts the kid
in the middle. Number two: Be generous with your ex, in every way you can be."
McKellar eventually remarried after her divorce. And as it turns out, her love story with second
husband Scott Sveslosky isn't all that different from all those Hallmark rom-coms she's starred in.
McKellar and Sveslosky were set up through mutual friends. Before they met in person,they
got to know each other over the phone, as they discovered that they were both fans of Deepak
Chopra's book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. When they finally met, he arrived with a copy of
the book and showed her the passages that he'd underlined. As she recalled to Country Living,
"I sat down across from him for coffee and started giggling and couldn't stop.
I didn't know what to say. I couldn't believe this is who I was sitting across
[from] [...] I just already loved him and was smitten from the moment I sat down."