Famed actor and powerhouse director Ron Howard recently explained why he refused to allow his daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard, to become an actor during her childhood and his explanation is a warning about the film industry.
Howard, 70, who began his own career as a six-year-old boy who made it big on the famed Andy Griffith Show playing Opie Taylor, told People magazine that Hollywood is not a good place for children.
“It’s possible for child performers to really find a lot that is positive within it, but it’s fraught with landmines,” Howard told the magazine adding that he remembers his own parents being hyperaware of how he and his little brother Clint were being treated in Hollywood and the things they faced as child actors.
But Howard, who is a very active left-wing Democrat, also had a more personal reason for refusing to allow Bryce to act as a child. He was afraid his daughter would be forced to wade through comparisons between her work and his own if she were to join the industry as a child.
He worried that since his original role as Opie had obtained a “mythically significant” status in TV history, Bryce would have a perhaps impossible challenge before she even started.
“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,” the Da Vinci Code director explained.
Howard’s comments come on the tail of comments from Bryce who told People in a precious interview that she wished she had been able to start her acting career at a younger age. “My parents were very firm on that boundary, that they were not going to support anyone who wanted to be a child actor,” she said.
On the other hand, Bryce said she was also grateful that her parents made her learn other skills that could help her make a living while she dabbled in acting as she reached 18.
“I’m really glad that they did that because when I did start acting, it took a while to make a living,” she told the magazine. “To be able to be like, ‘Oh, okay. I can actually support myself with this.'”
Bryce also added that she and her parents have a wonderful relationship and that she and her famed father talk often.
Howard did not say it directly, but Hollywood has a long, disgusting history of sexually exploiting young child actors.
The accusation that too many people in Hollywood are child predators and abusers has come from many, many members of the industry, including actors such as Elijah Wood and Corey Feldman, film producers, documentary filmmakers, and more.
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