For McKellar, math has equaled great success

She still looks like Winnie Cooper.

That's what's so striking about seeing Danica McKellar now. Even at 37, the actress still looks exactly like the ingenue of "The Wonder Years," whom McKellar played for the TV classic's five-year run. Looking at pictures of child actors all grown up is usually an oh-my-god-he-looks-like-that experience. But McKellar retains her cherubic face, amiability and girlish giggle.

But McKellar, in town shooting the locally produced movie "Mancation," has long busted notions of ruined lives after childhood stardom. Rather than turning to boozing and bit parts, McKellar turned to math - really, really hard math (we're talking classes with words like "multivariable in their name - which she would eventually study at UCLA.

"I felt like my brain was getting mushy," McKellar said at The Merion in Cinnaminson, N.J., about her decision to study math after acting.

"I was so attracted to the feeling of accomplishment that had nothing to do with Hollywood, that had nothing to do with anything superficial. I felt good about myself for something I was doing. I wasn't one little part of this big production where there are writers and directors, and I was getting recognized everyday for being Winnie Cooper, which isn't really me. But this [math] is mine; this is something I'm doing."

As an undergrad, McKellar co-authored the Chayes-McKellar-Winn theorem. In 2000, about a year after she graduated, McKellar was invited to speak in front of a congressional subcommittee about attracting more women into math and the sciences. In preparation she read about how girls were turning away from math during middle school, but not for lack of skill. "Girls tend not to see themselves as good at math. So, for instance, if you ask a 12-year-old girl who is getting an A-, she's more likely to say, 'Not really, I don't really get it,' even though she's doing well," McKellar said. "Ask a boy who is getting a B+, and he's like, 'Oh yeah, I'm good.' That's because there are so many stereotypes out there and it comes at us from all angles."

McKellar said she was almost a victim herself, believing that college math would be too difficult. It wasn't until a professor - who didn't own a TV and didn't know about his student's famous past - encouraged her to become a math major that it dawned upon her that she could actually do it. But she still had to watch the number of women in her upper-level math classes dwindle. McKellar estimates that by her senior year, only 10 percent of her classmates were women.

Now, McKellar is the author of three New York Times best-selling math books: Math Doesn't Suck, Kiss My Math, and Hot X: Algebra Exposed, all aimed at getting girls into the math game. She's working on a yet-to-be-titled fourth book on geometry.

"Writing the book was the most natural thing in the world. It felt like I had been standing waving my arms around and someone picked me up and put me in the water and I was already swimming," McKellar said. "I got the math degree and I love entertainment, and these are entertaining math books.

"This is why I was put on this planet."

McKellar thought about becoming a math professor, but she missed acting. Yet, when her life is taken over by acting, she misses math. Aside from "The Wonder Years," which was recently acquired by Netflix's streaming services, McKellar has had roles on "The West Wing" and other TV dramas, and has had a healthy career doing voice-overs, even playing the girlfriend of Fred Savage - "The Wonder Years' " Kevin Arnold - on the cartoon "Generation Rex."

"Mancation," about a jilted husband who takes a break from life after he finds out his new bride prefers the ladies, is a return to the set for McKellar, who hasn't been in front of a camera since her first child, Draco, was born seven months ago. (McKellar's mom, Mahalia, told us that out of all her daughter's accomplishments, it was her becoming a mom that made her the most proud.)

In "Mancation," from the makers of "Calendar Girl," which premieres at the Philadelphia Cinefest tonight, McKellar plays "the love interest. Not to be confused with the wife," she said, laughing.

"The character is a girl next door," said producer Tommy Avallone. "Who is better to play the girl next door than America's girl next door?"