GAF Star Explains How Faith Changed Her Parenting Approach
Movieguide® Contributor
Since WONDER YEARS actress Danica McKellar became Christian, it’s been so much less stressful for her to parent.
“Faith guides everything, including parenting,” she told Fox News Digital. “For me, my faith journey has led me to the most comforting place of knowing that I can consult with God at any time.”
“[I] used to spend a lot more time worrying and stressing out about how to make decisions and what to do next and ‘What if, what if,’” but now, “Knowing it’s in God’s hands means that even when things happen that I don’t think I want to have happen, I can say, ‘Well, let me just be curious about this. I wonder what the big plan is that I can’t see.”
McKellar shares her 14-year-old son, Draco, with ex-husband Mike Verta.
She came to faith in 2022 when Candace Cameron Bure gifted her a Bible. Movieguide® reported on a conversation between her and Bure later that year:
“Candace, I don’t wanna brush over the huge, huge impact that you’ve had on my life this year,” McKellar said. “I don’t even know how to call that like friendship, it’s more than that. Because of you helping me to find my relationship with God and Jesus, it’s been like a revolution in my life. It’s been a revelation in my life.”
“You gave me this Bible that I read all the time and I love it so much and I go to church now and I just, I talk to Jesus all the time every day. It’s unbelievable. And you were like my guide. You were just an angel in my life and you still are. And I just wanna thank you for that publicly,” she added.
Now, McKellar has read halfway through the Bible for a second time.
She said, “I’ve been around Christianity my whole life in some way, shape or form,” she explained, “but it never really clicked. And my good friend Candace Cameron Bure…she brought me to church. And all I can say is that something happened…I was flooded with this love and understanding.”
Deep down, McKellar thought that there is a “higher power,” and it all clicked when Bure reached out to her.
“Everything I always thought about there being some higher power and wanting to do the right thing, just because it’s the right thing, when no one’s watching, why that matters, and it all just came into focus. And I feel so blessed.”
“This is so comforting to me to have this other guiding force in my life,” she said. “Having that relationship, having that faith means that when trials and tribulations happen, because they still happen, there’s like all that in-between time.”
She’s been on an “amazing journey” since her eyes have been opened.
“Two and a half years now since I found the Lord,” she said. “And it’s been incredible.”
She says she sees “crazy miracles” in the small things like her son growing taller than her.
“He’s taller than me now, by the way,” she continued. “That just happened. That is blowing my mind…It’s like when you give birth, it’s the most amazing experience in the whole world. When your son gets taller than you, it’s like ‘What is this incredible experience?’”
She added Draco is “definitely a performer of some sort. I’m here to support him in whatever he wants to do. It’s the greatest joy in the world to be a parent.”
But if he wants to pursue a career as a performer she hopes he’ll choose another hustle, too.
“Find something else that you also love to do that you can make money at, because this business is not reliable,” she said.
Her own side hustle is writing math books. She has written 11 books. Several of them are for kids, and she’s currently in the middle of writing another one.
“Having something that you’re more in control of is vital for your mental health, because there’s just so much rejection and so much uncertainty,” she told Fox News Digital. “You just don’t know what you’re going to be doing this time next year. You literally have no idea. And so it’s for your financial security and your mental sanity. I recommend having something else that you also love that you can make money at while you pursue acting.”
The actress, who rose to fame as a kid on THE WONDER YEARS, says “former child stars get kind of a bad name,” which wasn’t the case for her.
“There are pitfalls,” she admitted, “but I don’t think it’s quite as common as you might be led to believe…But I definitely credit my parents for never overemphasizing the importance of fame.”
Her parents’ encouragement helped her break away from acting to get her math degree.
“I took a break, and I really just got away from Hollywood, and I really explored my brain, and it was incredibly satisfying and important for my own development and important for not having my sense of self so connected to success in the business, since success in the business is so fickle,” she said.
But she has had a lot of success, and her next movie with Great American Family premieres Nov. 29.
The synopsis for the movie, titled A CINDERELLA CHRISTMAS BALL reads:
In A Cinderella Christmas Ball, Chelsea Jones (McKellar) is a dance instructor and studio owner in Chicago who inspires kids to find themselves through dance. Just before Christmas, Chelsea discovers a photo she’s never seen before. Chelsea thinks the young woman is her birth mother who passed away when she was only five years old. The woman is in a wedding dress tugging on the hand of a man wearing a wedding ring, but that is all that can be seen of the man Chelsea believes may be her father.
The photo’s handwritten inscription reads, “Our place, Havenshire, December 23, 1984.” With only the internet, a plane ticket, and lifelong determination to go on, Chelsea now has four days in Havenshire to solve the mystery of her birth family. Along the way, she’ll have to sneak into a castle, teach a stubborn Prince how to dance, and be in just the right place on Christmas Eve when the bells toll.