Remember going to the Tanner house after school to hang out, have a snack and hopefully sneak a peek at D.J.’s hot uncle?
Oh, right… that was Full House, not real life.
But the show that made Candace Cameron Bure a star at 10 was part of our childhood, nonetheless—and the actress herself factored into so many of those formative memories, not to mention our dream of how we’d dress if we had all the allowance in the world to spend at Contempo Casuals and Wet Seal.
A short hop, skip and a jump through time later, Candace is a mom of three grown kids—and now a mother-in-law—and she’s celebrating her 48th birthday April 6.
While still keeping a busy schedule as the star of a series of GAC Family movies, having made the jump from being a Hallmark Channel regular in 2022, the empty nester has been devoting time to her eponymous podcast as well, talking about faith and the highs and lows of daily life.
Recently she detailed her battle with depression, noting that even just admitting she was struggling was not easy.
“It’s very difficult to speak out about it, even to your most trusted people,” Candace explained. “At least for me, I feel like I should be strong enough to overcome that and then it feels so weak.”
And that’s a sentiment that’s way more relatable than any plot from our favorite TGIF sitcom.
So, even though you may feel as if you grew up next door to that iconic San Francisco Victorian, there’s always more to learn. Fill your mind with these surprising facts about Candace Cameron Bure:
Columbia Pictures Co/Entertainment Pictures/ZUMAPRESS.com1. Candace’s early jobs included commercials for Cabbage Patch dolls and KFC, but her first IMDb credit was playing Megan White in a 1982 appearance on the hit drama St. Elsewhere, and her character actually showed up four more times over several years. She also had early-’80s parts on TJ Hooker, Punky Brewster, Growing Pains (starring her older brother, Kirk Cameron) and Who’s the Boss?.
2. She made her big-screen debut in the 1987 John Hughes-scripted teen romance Some Kind of Wonderful (in a little sister role) and played Sally Field‘s daughter in the 1988 film Punchline, which also starred an up-and-coming Tom Hanks. But while Candace has starred in more than two dozen TV movies, those are the only major theatrical releases on her resume. She had a great time on the set of Punchline, though, she recalled in her 2014 book Balancing It All, and took away a lifelong lesson from Field after seeing the Oscar winner insist she was spent after shooting a crying scene multiple times and needed a break.
“It taught me that even the best have their limits and it’s okay to say when you’ve reached yours,” Candace wrote.
American Broadcasting Companies via Getty Images3. Having a brother in show business helped with name recognition, but Full House creator Jeff Franklin remembered Candace as more than holding her own at her audition for the ABC sitcom, which premiered in 1987.
“She was just so natural,” he remembered to Variety in 2016. “There was nothing forced or artificial about her. She was just completely a real kid, really cute and funny. She was kind of like an everyday kid that I thought young kids watching the show would really relate to. It didn’t hurt that her last name was Cameron and she was Kirk Cameron’s little sister—that was kind of a bonus, it wouldn’t have mattered at all. Again, she just nailed the part.”
ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images4. Candace didn’t remember it going quite so smoothly on her end. After her first audition for the role of DJ Tanner (which Andrea Barber also read for before being cast as neighbor Kimmy Gibbler), “the casting director got on the phone immediately after and said, ‘Yeah, she was fine. She was OK. We’ll bring her back for a callback,'” Candace recalled to Glamour.com in 2016. “And she hung up the phone, and I started crying as she walked me back out to my mom. My mom said, ‘Why are you crying?’ and I said, ‘Because she said I was just OK and I was fine.'” The casting director insisted everything was fine, but “I was just destroyed,” the actress said. The child asked what she could do to be better than fine, and when they suggested she give them “more energy,” she did.
“I had two or three auditions after that for producers,” Candace added, “and that was it.”
ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images5. Necessarily savvy at a young age, Candace explained during a November 1990 appearance on an All New Mickey Mouse Club “Guest Day” (in which a kid got to spend the day with one of their favorite stars) that she did know people were paying attention to her behavior because she was famous.
She wasn’t too afraid of making mistakes, the 14-year-old said, but “you do have to be a little more cautious in what you do, because it is a different kind of world and you can kind of get messed up in some things. But I’m not too worried about it.”
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc6. Asked about losing the “Kirk Cameron’s little sister” moniker, Candance said in 1990, “Now that I’ve been on the show for three years now, going on a fourth, I’m more referred to now as ‘Candace,’ and I like that much better. I love being Kirk’s sister and we’re great together, we both love each other, but you still want to have your own identity and not be in someone’s shadow.”
7. Still, Full House was a whole Cameron family affair in 1988 when Kirk had a cameo playing DJ, Stephanie and Michelle’s cool older cousin Steve. Their parents, Robert and Barbara, can be spied sitting on a bench when the Tanners play football in the park in that same episode.
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc8. Candace is actually the youngest of four, Kirk, 53, being the oldest, followed by sisters Bridgette, 52, and Melissa, 49. Melissa started going on auditions as well when they were kids, but after one commercial she decided the biz wasn’t for her.
9. Candace’s Christian faith is central to her life now, but growing up, as she recalled in Balancing It All, her mom was the churchgoer and her dad wanted no part of that or any religious practice at all, though he was “very concerned with morality.”
ABC10. Like so many child stars, Candace had her first kiss on the job, when birthday girl DJ gets a kiss from her crush Kevin, played by Scott Curtis, in a Full House episode called “13 Candles” that aired Feb. 9, 1990. “It’s awkward and uncomfortable and you have millions of people looking at you,” Candace acknowledged on The View in 2016, also having a blush-worthy moment remembering her poof of crimped hair. “My parents were standing right off camera watching, it’s awkward! I was nervous, I didn’t know if I should keep my eyes opened or closed…but my real, real first kiss was several years later and it was great.”
Instagram11. Scott Weinger, who played DJ’s boyfriend Steve on Full House (and eventual meant-to-be person on Fuller House), brought Candace to the premiere of Aladdin in 1992. (He did all the title character’s talking, if not the singing, in the Disney film.), And she brought him to her real-life senior prom. Weinger posted the pic, bless him, for her 46th birthday.
Denis Brodeur/NHLI via Getty Images12. Thanks to certified hockey fanatic Dave “Uncle Joey” Coulier, Candace met her first real boyfriend/future husband, Russian-born athlete Valeri Bure, at a charity game held in Ontario, Canada, in October 1994 in the middle of an NHL lockout.
“Thank you @dcoulier for taking me to my first hockey game. Thank you Lori for being my wing woman and thank you @bobsaget for watching out for me like a dad,” Candace wrote on Instagram in honor of her 25th wedding anniversary, tagging her Full House costars in a pic from that momentous night.
Saget commented on the post, “When Val gave you his sweaty jersey after the game I knew it was a done deal. Love you. And Val!!!”
In fact, Val asked Candace out to lunch for the very next day.
“I was a big part of his introduction to America, or North America, I should say,” she recalled with a smile on The Open Door Sisterhood podcast in 2020, noting that her husband had only been in Canada for about two years when they first met, and he and his brother, NHL star Pavel Bure, “learned English by watching Full House.” They went on their date and “the rest is history,” she said. “It’s been a wild ride.”
Scott Mc Kiernan/ZUMAPRESS.com13. After Val and Cameron tied the knot on June 22, 1996, the groom sent their matchmaker a signed hockey stick reading, “Dear Dave, Thank you for Candace.”
14. Candace battled depression and developed bulimia after she stepped away from acting. Often on her own in Montreal, where she moved as a newlywed when Val played for the Canadians (but was frequently on the road for away games), “it was simply my way of coping with adjustment and fear after I left Hollywood and wasn’t sure who I was anymore,” she reflected in Balancing It All. “My life was unrecognizable, so I tried to find emotional comfort in food.”
CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images15. Candace became a mom at 22, basically the age when the hustle really begins for actresses, especially former child stars who want to successfully transition into adult roles. But while she has zero regrets whatsoever about pressing pause on her career to care for her children full time—daughter Natasha was born Aug. 15, 1998, followed by sons Lev on Feb. 20, 2000, and Maksim on Jan. 20, 2002—Candace has admitted that being labeled “just a mom” at the time touched a nerve.
“My heart would sink, making me feel as if caring for my children didn’t amount to anything,” she wrote in the foreword to Karen Ehman‘s 2015 book Hoodwinked. “But that was a lie!”
Vince Bucci/Getty Images16. Candace was matron of honor at Jodie Sweetin‘s first wedding, when she married Shaun Holguin, in 2002 and Natasha was a flower girl.
E.J. Camp/2008 Crown Media17. Slowed by injuries, Val retired from hockey in 2004. Once the kids were a bit older and their dad was on hand to stay with them, Candace went back to work, setting a fresh course for herself as the star of the 2008 Hallmark Channel holiday romance Moonlight & Mistletoe.
18. Dave’s wife Melissa Coulier shot the cover and a number of other photographs of Candace for her 2017 book Staying Stylish, one of the dozen-plus books, inspirational guides and children’s offerings she’s written or co-authored.
©2022 Crown Media United States LLC/Photographer: David Astorga19. When Fuller House premiered in 2016, Candace told Glamour.com that she wanted daughter Natasha to play her TV son Jackson’s high school girl crush. It didn’t happen quite that way, but Natasha did guest star on a 2020 episode, when DJ takes Jackson on a college tour.
The 25-year-old is building her own acting resume, which includes several Hallmark Channel holiday movies with her mom, as well as the pivotal role of a teenage Aurora Teagarden in flashback scenes in 2022’s Haunted by Murder.
Natasha moved to Dallas in 2023, where, she happily shared in a Sept. 19 TikTok , she was ensconced in the “most unproblematic, drama free era” of her life to date.
YouTube20. Candace’s one season as a permanent cohost on The View, knowing she’d been asked to fill the chair that was historically reserved for a more conservative voice, was memorable for the wrong reasons. “The stress and the anxiety, I actually have a pit in my stomach right now [thinking about it],” she recalled on the Behind the Table podcast in October 2021. “And I have PTSD, like, I can feel it. It was so difficult, and to manage that emotional stress was so hard.”
She credited cohost Whoopi Goldberg with having her back, explaining, “Whoopi came in a handful of times. I felt secure knowing she would protect me and not come at me if there was a difference of opinion.”
21. Speaking of that chair, Candace penned the foreword to Elisabeth Hasselbeck‘s 2019 book Point of View, writing that she had faith she could do the job thanks to her friend’s fearless 10-year run on the show that paved the way for future host à host combat.
Presley Ann/Getty Images22. Her skin perhaps thickened from sparring with her cohosts on The View, Candace comes prepared to clap back at online trolls, being one of the many-to-all celebs who can’t post even a sweet family moment without attracting all sorts of rudeness amid the many “likes.”
“It’s so strange to me that people have the audacity to write horrible and negative comments,” she shared on E!’s Daily Pop in January 2021. “Like, you would never say that to someone’s face.”
In response to cracks about her family’s holiday card, she had waded into the comments herself, replying, “Wow-I post a family photo and you all find everything you don’t like about it or can make fun of. Do better than that. Please.”
Candace explained to E!, “It was more about a reminder, like, I’m sharing the best of what I believe my family is on a Christmas card, so keep your mouth shut.””
Instagram23. They tried to dissuade their kids from playing hockey, Val knowing after 10 years in the NHL how much wear and tear it causes on the body. But Maks, who knew from the time he was 4 that he wanted to play, insisted—and they relented when he was 7, Candace recalled in her book Balancing It All. And of course Val, who had tried to encourage the boys to play tennis, agreed to coach them.
24. Candace and her husband started a direct-to-consumer winery that makes limited-edition batches, such as the 2012 Bure Thirteen, named after the No. 13 Val wore during his hockey career. Val having been a longtime oenophile, after his retirement from the NHL the couple partnered with Josh Peeples to found Bure Family Wines in St. Helena, Calif.
Instagram25. Candace and Val became empty nesters in 2021, celebrating Maksim’s graduation from NorthStar Christian Academy and then seeing him off to college that August—though Mom and Dad only got as far as the airport.
“I had to just drop him off at LAX. And I’m getting no sympathy from someone,” Candace lamented on her Instagram Story in a video made before she and Val were even home. Unmoved, her husband responded to the pointed dig, adding, “That’s what’s wrong with America, raising soft kids.”
In a later update, Candace said, “Maks did not call me when his flight landed. But I just called him, and he landed safe and sound, and we FaceTimed. And someone’s picking him up from the airport, and he’s sleeping on someone’s couch.”
They grow up so fast!
“It’s sad and heartbreaking at times,” the mom of three reflected in 2020 on The Open Door Sisterhood podcast about two of her kids being out of the house. “We don’t talk about the letting go stuff as much [as new baby excitement]…but it’s hard.”
She added, “You’ve poured everything you have into these people and you just have to let ’em fly.”
