Danica McKellar

Danica McKellar (born January 3, 1975), is an American actress better known for her job as Winnie Cooper in the television show, The Wonder Years.

Born in San Diego, California, McKellar and sister Crystal McKellar have mantained a friendly competition to see who gets more acting jobs, and, as a matter of a fact, when the actress who would play Winnie had to be chosen, the only two actresses who were still in competition were the McKellar sisters.

Danica and her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 8, and soon after, she and her sister began acting.

McKellar studied at UCLA, majoring in mathematics, and graduated summa cum laude in 1998. She coauthored a scientific paper¹ which appeared in a peer-reviewed physics journal.

Since then, as well as several guest roles in television series, she has written and directed two short films. She has returned to regular television with a role in The West Wing.

Her acting credits include:

• The Twilight Zone (as Debbie Dobs) 1985-1986
• Volkswagen commercial, 1986
• Wide World Of Kids, (as herself), 1987-1990
• The Wonder Years, 1988-1993
• No More Rhyme (Deborah 'Debbie' Gibson video) 1989
• Camp Cucamonga (Tv movie, as Lindsey Scott) 1990
• Captain Planet (animated, voice only) 1992
• Sidekicks (feature movie, as Lauren) 1993
• Walker, Texas Ranger (played Lori in one episode) 1994
• Cradle Of Conspiracy (tv movie, she also played Lori) 1994
• Sirens 1994
• Justice For Annie (tv movie, as Annie) 1995
• Working (Jolie in two episodes) 1997
• The Love Boat The Next Wave (played a nun in one episode) 1997
• Happy Hour (as herself) 1999
• Grease (play) (as Rizzo) 1999
• The West Wing 2002-

Reference

¹ Chayes, L., McKellar, D. & Winn, B. (1998) Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin–Teller models on Z. Journal of Physics A: Mathematics and General, 31, 9055–9063. Full text as PDF