Ron Howard is revealing why he didn’t want his eldest daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, to be a child actor.
The director-writer-actor recently told People magazine that he forbade Bryce from acting at a young age after having to navigate Hollywood as a child himself.
“It’s possible for child performers to really find a lot that is positive within it, but it’s fraught with landmines,” he explained. Ron played Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show at just six years old in the 1960s, and recalled his parents having to supervise him and his brother.
The Arrested Development actor-producer added that he also protected his children from the spotlight because he didn’t want them to be compared to his career if they followed a similar path.
“On top of everything else, because the characters that I played as a child were so well-known as to almost be iconic… I also thought, ‘Hey, if one of our kids tries to act as a child, boy or girl, they’re going to be unfairly compared,’” Ron said, especially since The Andy Griffith Show was already “mythically significant in TV history.”
Last month, Bryce shared with People that she would have liked to have launched her acting career when she was younger, but that her parents Ron and Cheryl Howard were against it.
“My parents were very firm on that boundary, that they were not going to support anyone who wanted to be a child actor,” she previously told the outlet. The Jurassic World actress didn’t get her breakout role until 2004 with M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.
However, Bryce is ultimately grateful for what her parents taught her, especially for encouraging her to find other ways to bring in income.
“I’m really glad that they did that because when I did start acting, it took a while to make a living,” she said. “To be able to be like, ‘Oh, okay. I can actually support myself with this.’”
