Actress Candace Cameron-Bure credits faith and family for bolstering her childhood success in the ABC sitcom “Full House” and her transition to the adult face of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies.
Now 47, the mother of three adult children says her goal is “to point people one step closer to Jesus” through her more recent work in Christian family films and podcasting.
“That’s my mission, that’s what I want to do,” Ms. Cameron-Bure said in a video interview with Washington Times and Higher Ground columnist Billy Hallowell.
“The ways in which I get to point people to Jesus … look different depending on the day,” she added.
The former child star still acts and serves as producer and chief creative officer of the Christian-owned Great American Family network.
She said her love of the holiday’s warmth, generosity, decorations, music and food has become decidedly more Christian as she grows older and encourages people to invite others to Christmas Eve church services.
“It truly is a wonderful time of the year,” Ms. Cameron-Bure said. “But for me, the real reason I love it so much is that it is the easiest time to share Christ with everyone, because that’s what the season really is all about.”
Mr. Hallowell, a digital TV host and interviewer for additional outlets such as Faithwire and CBN News, has interviewed Ms. Cameron-Bure several times.
He noted that while Christians get caught up “in all of the fun and the feelings” of Christmas and “know what the purpose is,” it’s easy to become complacent about it.
“We forget that everybody … is celebrating this day and the purpose of the day is Jesus,” he said. “So what better time to be sharing with others around us?”
Starting at age 10, Ms. Cameron-Bure played sensible and caring oldest child D.J. Tanner on “Full House” from 1987 to 1995. She reprised the role in the Netflix sequel “Fuller House” from 2016 to 2020, portraying D.J. as a single mother, and starred in made-for-television holiday films for Hallmark over the past two decades.
The younger sister of actor Kirk Cameron, an evangelical filmmaker who starred in the ABC sitcom “Growing Pains,” Ms. Cameron-Bure became a Christian at age 12 as their parents sought marriage counseling at a Los Angeles-area church. She has two sisters who did not enter show business.
She said her faith matured after she married professional hockey player Valeri Bure in 1996 and left show business for 10 years. After giving birth to their first child Natasha in 1998, she planned to keep working full-time. But her husband’s schedule in the NHL made that impossible.
“I very quickly realized that I couldn’t do my job as a mom the way that I wanted to do it if I were working full-time and trying to travel,” she said.
She started questioning her faith around that time.
“Before my 20s, I never spent time [with] the Bible. And then my brother, I had a conversation with him, and he challenged me on some questions and to read a book that really opened up my eyes,” Ms. Cameron-Bure recalled.
As she sat in her bedroom reading the Ten Commandments and reflecting on the Christian book “The Way of the Master,” she said Christianity suddenly “clicked” for her.
“I finally saw, like, ‘Oh, I’m a sinner by God’s standard,’ and then I understood my need for a savior and for Jesus,” she said.
She said she told God: “I want to live in gratitude to you for the rest of my life, and I want to honor you and give glory to you out of that gratitude and thankfulness because you died on the cross. You paid the penalty for my sin.”
During the first two years of marriage, she turned to the Bible and church Bible studies to help her adjust to staying home full-time. By the time of her third child Max, her “mom instincts” had fully kicked in, she said.
“I knew that was my season of life, and, I’ll tell you, I truly flourished. I flourished in it in the relationship with my children, in my relationship with my husband, and in my relationship, most of all, with God,” Ms. Cameron-Bure said.
As her children spent more time at school and her husband retired from hockey, she said the Bible gave her peace about returning to show business.
She hopes to honor God and her family in two television movies premiering on Great American Family this Thanksgiving weekend. Her daughter Natasha joins her in “A Christmas for the Ages,” an intergenerational story about women sharing holiday memories from the 1940s, 1960s and 1990s.
In “My Christmas Hero,” her character opens a box of letters and photographs that her grandfather had sent to her grandmother while serving in the military during World War II.
“It’s actually my [real-life] grandfather, because those were his military pictures, and my grandfather wrote letters to my grandmother every day that he was at war, and my grandmother saved all of them,” Ms. Cameron-Bure said.
She hopes audiences will take away “all the heart” that goes into her Great American Family productions.
“They’re based on love for family, love for country and love for faith as well,” Ms. Cameron-Bure said. “And I think there’s a warmth to our movies that sometimes gets missed in the rom-com Christmas movie world.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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