‘Wonder Years’ Star Danica McKellar Opens Up About Her Journey from Child Stardom to Finding Purpose Through God

Danica McKellar says her road to happiness is paved with faith in God!

After her six-season stint playing Winnie Cooper on “The Wonder Years,” Danica went to UCLA to get a degree in mathematics.

“I stopped acting for four years,” she says. “I just needed to find out who else I was. For me, the way I could find out was to just do something else and really exercise my brain and let go of all the glamour and superficiality of Hollywood. That was really empowering to me.”

After returning to acting, Danica continued her scholastic endeavors — and also penned a highly successful series of books to inspire children about math.

“I’ve got 2 million books in print,” she says proudly. “Kids are finding math success with my McKellar math books. I’m so proud of it. But at the time, you don’t have the perspective.”

Danica confides that she finally figured out her own life three years ago when “I came into my faith. It just hit me like all at once. I had a lot of biases against Christianity for most of my life because it seemed like Christianity was controlling people and trying to restrict their lives. So, it was really strange and interesting for me to suddenly be talking about Jesus.”

It all happened when Danica realized that “religion itself is not the thing. It’s a relationship with God. Having a relationship with God is about letting go and trusting and not thinking that I have to be in charge of everything all the time.”

Now at 50, Danica is as happy and healthy as she’s ever been thanks to her faith in the Lord.

She exercises every day and cooks dinner “every night because you never know what’s in restaurant food. A restaurant’s job is to make the food tasty, not healthy. For exercise, I’ve been working in some weight training. Not really heavy. I hear with women, it’s important to stave off osteoporosis with weight-bearing exercise. And then my favorite kind of exercise is ballroom dance.

“It’s amazing how much less I worry about stuff and how much I don’t have to feel like the world is on my shoulders. It’s just been another step for me in terms of being able to have a better perspective on life and my position in this world.”