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Danica Mae McKellar (born January 3, 1975), is an American actress of Scottish and Portuguese descent, best known for her role as Winnie Cooper in the television show, The Wonder Years.

Born in La Jolla, California, McKellar and sister Crystal McKellar have maintained a friendly competition to see who gets more acting jobs. In fact, when the actress who would play Winnie had to be chosen, the last two actresses under consideration for the role 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 paperChayes, L., McKellar, D. & Winn, B. (1998) Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin–Teller models on \mathbb{Z}^2. Journal of Physics A: Mathematics and General, 31, 9055–9063. Full text as PDF which appeared in a peer-reviewed physics journal. The paper proves a theorem that has come to be known as the Chayes-McKellar-Winn TheoremUSNews.com. USNews.com: America's Best Colleges 2006: College Flashback: Danica McKellar. 2006. [1]. This paper makes her one of the very few people, and perhaps the only full-time acting professional besides Natalie Portman, with a finite Erdos-Bacon number. Referring to the mathematical abilities of McKellar and her fellow student Brandy Winn, one of her math teachers, Professor Lincoln Chayes, was quoted in the New York TimesKenneth Chang, "Between Series, an Actress Became a Superstar (in Math)," New York Times, July 19, 2005. as saying, "I thought that the two were really, really first rate". McKellar even provides free online math tutoring for her fans at her official internet website. While a student at UCLA, she was a sister of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.

Since then, she has had several guest roles in television series (including one with former co-star Fred Savage on Working), and has written and directed two short films. She briefly returned to regular television with a recurring role in the 2002-03 season of The West Wing.

She appeared in lingerie for a pictorial for the July 2005 edition of Stuff Magazine [2].

An Australian Hip-Hop act, The Winnie Coopers, named themselves after her well known character from The Wonder Years.

Danica McKellar has also lent her voice to the character Jubilee for the video game X-Men Legends and Invisible Woman for the video game Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

In June 2006 Lifetime Television announced that McKellar will star in a Lifetime movie and web-based series titled Inspector Mom about a mother who solves mysteries. [3] In an interview in the November 17, 2006 issue of TV Guide, McKellar said that two TV movies and ten webisodes of Inspector Mom were being produced.[4]

Acting credits

• The Twilight Zone (as Debbie Dobs) 1985-1986
• Volkswagen commercial, 1986
• Wide World Of Kids, (as herself), 1987-1990
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, (as Patty the Sad-Eyed Orphan), 1989
• The Wonder Years, 1988-1993
• No More Rhyme (Deborah Gibson video) 1989
• Camp Cucamonga (TV movie, as Lindsey Scott) 1990
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers (animated, voice only) 1992
• Sidekicks (feature movie, as Lauren) 1993
• Babylon 5 (in "The War Prayer" as Aria Tensus) 1994
• 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
• Love Boat: The Next Wave (played a nun in one episode) 1997
• Happy Hour (as herself) 1999
• Grease (play) (as Rizzo) 1999
• Static Shock (as Frieda) 2000-2004
• Path of Destruction 2005
• The West Wing 2002-2003

References

External links

• Where Are They Now? article on Danica McKellar
• Official website
• danicamckellar.org
• NPR interview with McKellar about her theorem [5]
• Website for the Stanford University February 2006 Proof and Prejudice: Women in Mathematics Conference, at which McKellar was a speaker [6]

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