'Full House' star ditched Hollywood career to become college teacher: I was never 'going to stay'
"Full House" actress Anne Marie McEvoy was never planning to make acting in Hollywood her permanent career.
McEvoy, 48, who portrayed "popular girl" Kathy Santoni on the hit sitcom, told her "Full House" co-stars Jodie Sweetin and Andrea Barber that she was determined to leave Hollywood to go to college.
"As a kid I didn't do it because I wanted to be an actress at all," McEvoy explained on the "How Rude, Tanneritos!" podcast. "It was a job. I'm going to college… money… all that."
When asked why she decided to leave Hollywood behind, McEvoy replied, "I was always going to… I never had a thought I was going to stay."
"Everybody wants to be, like, famous, don’t they?" she continued. "That’s not what I wanted. I really wanted… to be a mom. I wanted to… have a PhD. I wanted to be a professor."
She added that she "fit in" more at college "than in Hollywood."
McEvoy played Candace Cameron Bure and Barber’s friend on "Full House." The cast described how she was featured in several "heavy episodes." McEvoy acted in the "Spin the Bottle" and "Say No Way" drinking episodes.
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The former actress earned her PhD in developmental and educational psychology at University of California, Irvine in 2007. McEvoy joined the faculty as an assistant professor of education.
She went on to share how she took lessons from the hit show and taught them in the classroom.
"I studied adolescent development and… teach classes on it," McEvoy shared with Sweetin and Barber. "I taught a whole version of the course… around ‘Full House.’ I used examples from ‘Full House.’"
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McEvoy admitted that one of her students discovered she was on "Full House" and recognized her from the popular sitcom.
"People would find out and… quietly after class… and said, ‘I was watching TV last night, and I saw you. Was that you on ‘Full House?’" she said.
McEvoy said she would laugh and respond, "You have an exam tomorrow. What are you doing watching TV?’"
"It was close to the beginning of the semester that I was outed and then everybody found out. And you can’t really talk about much else, so then I just leaned into it," she explained.
McEvoy said that she included lessons about "adolescent sexuality, drinking, family and peers" from examples of "Full House" scenes.
"It’s a fantastic show for that. All the biggies… and identity. Your sense of who you are and trying on makeup… and fighting with your friends… I mean, that's what it is, was," she said.
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While the "Full House" actress doesn’t plan to return to her acting career anytime soon, McEvoy did reprise her role as Santoni in the Netflix reboot "Fuller House" in 2016.