Tragic Details About Hallmark Star Andrew Walker

While Hallmark movies are known for being light-hearted, that doesn't mean their stars' lives are as breezy as their characters'. Several of the channel's favorite actors have lived through tragic events themselves. Hallmark star Andrew Walker has faced many challenges, but he has persevered to become one of the network's most beloved stars.

"I feel like there are so many things that a person goes through in their life ... People can have tragedy in their life at the drop of a hat," he told TV Fanatic in 2021. Walker mentioned drawing upon personal tragedy for his acting, which can offer a sense of healing. "It's a beautiful inside-outside experience where you take a bit of reality, and you take a bit of imagination, and you try just to embody that," he said. He's no stranger to personal tragedies himself, from an injury derailing his athletic aspirations to losing his mother.

While Andrew Walker is from Montreal, Canada, that doesn't mean his first love was hockey, the country's favorite national pastime. He actually played a different sport — football. He received a scholarship to Boston College to play for them, but his time as an athlete was cut short by a damning knee injury. "At the time it was a very difficult setback to come to terms with," he told From the Desk in 2020. "However, when I look back now, that trial has not only made me a stronger, more resilient person but also saved me from potentially a few more injuries."

Walker's football injury may have closed one door, but it opened another in a way, as it allowed him to pursue acting. "When you are faced with challenges in life, you have to look at the possible opportunity it could potentially be presenting," he said. "Mine was an acting career." He even pulled inspiration from his injury for one of his Hallmark roles as a former hockey player in 2024's "Jingle Bell Run." "To play an NHL hockey player who ... retired against his own wishes at the height of his career, brought me back to being an athlete whose future took an unexpected turn," he told PhotoBook Magazine in 2024. But Walker said that being surrounded by "people and finding love" changed his path in life "in the best way possible."

Alongside his wife, Cassandra Troy, Andrew Walker started a cold-pressed juice company in 2013 called Clover Juice. It was later rebranded as Little West to reflect the couple's adoration of the West Coast and to honor their son West. "As excited as we are about the new name and look, our process hasn't changed at all; we are still ... creating the best-tasting juices around in flavors our consumers have come to know and love," Cassandra said in a press release at the time (via PR Newswire).

While Walker has found tremendous success acting in Hallmark movies, that doesn't mean he easily found success with Little West. Like any entrepreneurial undertaking, getting the business off the ground was a challenge. "[We] lived in a small 2 bedroom apartment for 10 years before moving into our house," Cassandra captioned a photo of her husband and children on Instagram in 2022. "For years, we could barely afford rent because we constantly put everything we had into keeping Little West alive. We were married while living there, we started our business there, West was born there, we said goodbye to our first dog there, and we built lifelong friendships there. It was the perfect most humbling place for us at that time in our lives." As of this writing, Little West is going strong and can be found in grocery stores across California, Arizona, and Nevada, proving that the Walkers' struggles paid off.

Joyce was Andrew Walker's lovely mother who started showing Alzheimer's symptoms in 2013 when she was in her mid-70s. Through art, exercise, and other stimulating activities, Walker, his father, and his sister were able to keep Joyce from deteriorating too rapidly. This changed, however, during the COVID-19 pandemic where she began developing Parkinson's symptoms. 

"She was in a wheelchair and my dad was caregiving for her for a good two, three years after that," Walker told EntertainmentNow. He remained positive that the mother he knew was still there. "Her body was atrophying," he said. "Her eyes would just brighten, though, when she would see me come in. ... Her soul was there."

Sadly, Joyce died in 2023. In an Instagram post commemorating her that year, Walker called her "the most dynamic, talented, strong willed, loving and protective woman." "I'm so lucky to call you my mother. ... As you leave us in this material world, I'll be able to feel your presence wherever I go which gives me so much comfort," he continued. Walker took his pain from losing his mother and turned it into a force for good by supporting Alzheimer's research.

In 2023, Andrew Walker joined his Hallmark costars Nikki Deloach and Ashley Williams for their Dance Party to End ALZ event in Nashville. They too lost loved ones to dementia and Alzheimer's, and the event raised over $300,000 in 2023 for Alzheimer's research and over $2 million across its lifetime. "We need to find a way to cure this disease and it's grassroots people coming together like this that are getting us one step closer to figuring out this problem," he told Southern Living at the time. The next year, Walker joined the event again and expressed hope that the stories they tell will bring them closer to a solution to Alzheimer's disease. "We're carrying on our mothers' and fathers' and people that we've lost — we're carrying on their legacies, you know?" he told EntertainmentNow. "Telling these stories about who they were and ... hopefully getting one step closer to solving this problem." 

According to Walker, his acting has helped him grieve the loss of his mother. "That's what I love about acting," he told TV Fanatic in 2021. "You're able to take certain things that you've either experienced already or that you potentially might experience and know how to process that. ... [Y]ou have this platform where it can be healing." In a Hallmark Channel YouTube video in 2020, Walker said he'll always feel a connection to his mother through acting and be grateful for her support. "If it wasn't for her encouraging me to pursue my acting career, I don't think I'd be doing what I'm doing today," he said.