Most child actors face an inherent number of challenges throughout their youth. Grappling with the fame and often difficult pressures that come with their roles on film and television, some child performers choose to leave their lives in Hollywood behind to pursue more meaningful journeys in higher education.
Danica McKellar, the former star of ABC’s The Wonder Years, is one such example of this phenomenon.
Appearing on The Wonder Years throughout the series’ six-season-long run, McKellar practically grew up on the set of ABC’s influential coming-of-age drama. Portraying the close friend, next-door neighbor, and recurring love interest of Fred Savage’s Kevin Arnold, McKellar was just 13 when she appeared in the series’ pilot, gradually growing into adolescence as the show got underway.
According to People magazine, after The Wonder Years concluded in 1993, the then-18-year-old McKellar recognized that she needed to take a break from acting in order to pursue her other personal and professional interests.
Settling on a potential career in mathematics, McKellar opted to exit Hollywood to obtain a formal education in the subject.
“I stopped acting for four years. I just needed to find out who else I was,” McKellar reflected. “For me, the way I could find out was just to do something else and really exercise my brain.”
She also said that, by taking a break from acting, she could “let go of all the glamour and superficiality of Hollywood,” which she felt was important in that early stage of her life.
Since securing a degree in mathematics at UCLA, the 50-year-old McKellar has occasionally ventured back into acting — something she was initially nervous about after graduating from college in 1998.
“When I was done with my degree and I decided to go back into acting, I felt like I was trying to catch up,” McKellar said. “I was doing all these independent films that weren’t very good.”
In addition to her recurring roles in The West Wing, Young Justice, and various Hallmark Channel films, McKellar remains an active voice in the mathematics community, penning several books on the subject including Math Doesn’t Suck, Hot X: Algebra Exposed, and Goodnight, Numbers, among many others.
