Bankrate: Do these two careers relate to each other in any way?

Danica McKellar: I think the only way is the extra exposure I get for my passion for math education because I'm an actress. And, I played Catherine in (the play) "Proof" once. That was a combination of the two. But the most important is that parents who know "The Wonder Years" and who watch it with their girls now can say, "Here's this book, and she makes math look not so bad, huh?" It makes math kind of fun.

Bankrate: So being the math whiz you were really fired you up to star in "Proof?"

Danica McKellar: Oddly enough, that's not how I got to audition. When I auditioned, the director had never seen "The Wonder Years," but he knew I was from television, which put me at the low end of the totem pole. He's like, "We're gonna do this in a real theater, we do eight shows a week, and you're probably not used to that kind of thing." It was so insulting, but I just knew, as I had never known before, that I was going to get the role. There was no question in my mind. And when I did the audition, they asked me about my math background, and I talked about math for a while, and I think that probably put me in some good standing with them.

Bankrate: Once you got the part, did your math knowledge make it that much more relatable for you?

Danica McKellar: Did you see "A Beautiful Mind?" Remember when he would look around, see an orange, and then he'd see someone's tie, and you would suddenly see what he was seeing? It was a really great representation of that, where they would draw a line, then a symbol, and then a spatial relationship between the two objects in (computer-generated imagery). That's what it feels like.

You're not actually seeing the world for what it is, you're living in this other world of the imagination, the world of mathematics. In "Proof," I was able to use that sort of representation to the nth degree to create this character. It was also fun because I was the math consultant. What do math professors wear? I can tell you exactly what they wear. They wear corduroy pants and short sleeves, and usually light colors because chalk gets on them. So I was a good resource for them.

Bankrate: You co-authored a major proof in college. How rare is that for a college student?

Danica McKellar: It was more rare then than it is now. I'm not gonna say we started the trend. Schools get attention for that kind of thing, so they encourage it. I'm not gonna say it happens a lot, but more now than it used to.

Bankrate: What is it about math that makes you so passionate about it?

Danica McKellar: I think that's like asking, "Why does math show up in nature?" It's part of you.