‘Nepo baby’ stars in her own happy days
As the daughter of Ron Howard, Bryce Dallas Howard grew up in Hollywood surrounded by stars – until her sister hit Steve Martin with a shoe. But she’s making her own way in a competitive world.
It was 1989 when Bryce Dallas Howard’s parents decided their children were not to be trusted around film stars. Howard and her three siblings were on the set of Parenthood, the 1989 comedy directed by her father, Ron Howard, and starring Steve Martin.
Sister Paige, then three, “was wearing these little plastic high-heeled shoes and she slipped and the shoe spun and whacked Steve in the forehead”, Howard says, guffawing. Her father and her mother, writer Cheryl Howard, “were, like, ‘We’re not bringing them around the actors any more’ ”.
Well, that edict didn’t last. These days Howard, 44, gets to play with actors for a living, bringing her spark and naturalistic warmth to films including three in the Jurassic World franchise, Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe, and Rocketman, in which she played Elton John’s mum, Sheila Dwight.
Her new film, Deep Cover, is a British comedy-thriller directed by Tom Kingsley, who made Ghosts and Stath Lets Flats, and written by Jurassic World veterans Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, alongside British comedy duo Ben Ashenden and Alex Owen, better known to sketch fans as the Pin.
It stars Howard, Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed from comedy-drama series Ted Lasso as improvisational actors who – with their ability to play roles and think on their feet – are hired by Sean Bean’s cop to infiltrate a drug-smuggling operation (headed by Paddy Considine and Ian McShane).
Basically, it’s a load of Poms, plus Howard, who was born in Los Angeles and brought up in New York State, the daughter of a man who starred in Happy Days, that ode to apple-pie America, and went on to direct Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. Did she mind being the only American in the room?
“Oh, I loved it. It felt like home,” she says, speaking in a hotel in London. “My brother, Reed, was born here when my dad was directing Willow (in 1987), I learnt to read here and the majority of my professional career has been here.”
Her recent experience of England has mainly amounted to “living in Slough because it’s close to Pinewood”, the famous studio in Buckinghamshire where the James Bond movies are made, so being able to shoot Deep Cover on the streets of East London was a thrill.
She also witnessed the reinvention of Bloom, who can tend towards earnestness (in Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean) but here is a hoot. His Method-acting character creates a backstory to impress the criminals: “Ran away from my parents when I was five. By the time acne was kicking in I was a stable boy in Zurich.”
“Orlando steals the movie,” Howard says. As “a very handsome guy, a classic leading man”, he doesn’t often “have a chance to be the funny one. It’s almost like Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.”
Howard did improv while studying at New York University and watched improv comedy on both sides of the Atlantic to prepare for the film. Englishmen such as Mohammed, who does live comedy as well as acting, “are faster than Americans”, Howard says. She and Mohammed “have friends in common”, the most notable being Henry Winkler, who played the Fonz in Happy Days and is Howard’s godfather.
Comedians should be admired for “putting themselves out there”, she says, citing Chris Pratt, her Jurassic World co-star. “You assume everything is effortless with a guy like that,” she says, but Pratt told her that while he played the clown at school “he was annoying for a long time”. What was Howard like at school? “I just hid.”
She is a world-class name-dropper, with references to stars such as Cruise and Nicole Kidman, whom she got to know in 1991 when her dad directed them in Far and Away.
They would make the Howard siblings laugh, and make them snacks. Cruise entertained her with backflips and she watched Kidman in the makeup chair. “Someone used an eyelash curler on her. I’d never seen one and I was, like, ‘Do I need to intervene?’.”
These stories are told with an acknowledgment of the privileges of being a “nepo baby”. Most actors hate talking about this but Howard seems to relish it. “I happen to be in a situation where there are multiple layers of privilege,” she says, pointing out that her father was himself raised in the industry, being the son of Rance Howard, a director, writer and actor, and actor Jean Speegle Howard.
“So I got to have access in a way that, even if you were born into it, most people wouldn’t. At the beginning of my career people would ask, ‘Do you feel it’s been a disadvantage?’. I was, like, ‘Disadvantage?’. When you’re an actor, you need to capture a casting director or director’s attention, but when you’re someone who’s related to someone else, there’s an inherent curiosity there.”
That happened with M Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense, who cast a 22-year-old Howard as the lead in The Village before she had played a meaningful film role. “He’s a madman for doing what he did,” she says of Shyamalan, who saw her as Rosalind in a stage production of As You Like It and cast her without an audition. She noticed him during the show and had “a premonition backstage where I was, like, ‘Wait, am I going to work with him?’.” You might call it a sixth sense.
Deep Cover, Howard says, reminded her of working with Seth Rogen and his production partner, Evan Goldberg, on the comedy 50/50. “They would be pitching lines or say, ‘Try not looking at him until you say it this time’. It allows you to not fake it.” That’s important because, she says, “I’m the world’s worst liar”. Which is what you would expect from someone brought up by the famously decent Ron Howard.
Except isn’t all acting a form of lying? “Yeah, I actually talked to Laura Dern about this. It’s living truthfully under imaginary circumstances. As an actress I’m less of a shape-shifter and more like regular life: dorky and earnest.” Which is also what you would expect from Ron Howard’s daughter.
Her mention of Rogen and Goldberg leads us to The Studio, their Hollywood farce series in which Ron played a more ornery version of himself. “I was nervous for him. They shoot everything as a one-er (one-shot take) and you can’t fumble-bumble anything, but he was so dialled in. It was fun hearing Evan and Seth get so excited. It just made me really proud.”
Acting can be less blissful than that. Howard remembers shooting Manderlay in Norway with Lars von Trier, the Danish director with a reputation for erratic behaviour. On arrival she was immediately summoned by von Trier. “He started insulting me: ‘Your father’s a terrible filmmaker.’ I went, ‘Lars, what are you trying to see?’, and he said, ‘Your angry face. I don’t know what it looks like’.”
Von Trier then threw a glass of water in her face. “So I threw a glass of water in his face. He goes, ‘Why did you do that?’, and got up and left. That was my introduction to the Lars von Trier experience, but it wasn’t like I went to my room and cried or anything. I was sort of delighted by it.”
It takes a lot to faze Howard: certainly she’s not bothered by all the people who mistake her for actor Jessica Chastain. “Whenever that happens I feel good about myself because it means I put myself together and brushed my hair. I don’t get mistaken for Jess when I’m looking like my sloppy self.”
Unflappability has served her well as a director, with two documentaries and several episodes of Star Wars shows under her belt. Possible directorial projects include a remake of 1986 children’s sci-fi film The Flight of the Navigator. Howard’s future is in directing, she hopes: “But I don’t want to let go of acting as my dad has done. That would be heartbreaking because I learn so much on a set. I have so much fun.”
THE TIMES
Deep Cover is released on June 12 on Prime Video.
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