One of the most promising starlets in Hollywood, Bryce Dallas Howard has a short but distinguished list of credits. Her terrific performance in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” catapulted her to fame in 2004, and she has since proven that she has talent to match her famous last name.
Bryce is the daughter of Oscar-winning director and “Happy Days” star Ron Howard and writer Cheryl Alley. Both her parents sport flaming red hair, and their daughter got her name from the crimson brilliance of Bryce Canyon, while her middle name Dallas is a nod to the city she was conceived in. Ultimately born in Los Angeles on March 2, 1981, Howard grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut with her family, shielded from the craziness of Hollywood that her laid-back celebrity father desperately wanted to avoid. She attended the Greenwich Country Day School and Byram Hills High School in Armonk, New York before moving on to the top-ranked drama program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Stella Adler Conservatory.
Howard was successful on stage after college, performing in plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and George Bernard Shaw, among others. Her film debut came in the 2003 indie “Book of Love”, and that same year red-hot director M. Night Shyamalan cast her in “The Village” after being impressed with her in a stage production. Her subdued performance as a blind woman in Shyamalan’s quirky period suspense film was a bright spot in an otherwise forgettable picture, and it helped her land the lead role in controversial Danish director Lars von Trier’s “Manderlay”. A sequel to his earlier film “Dogville”, Howard had huge shoes to fill in taking over the role from Nicole Kidman, who was unable to reprise the role due to scheduling conflicts. Though it wasn’t a commercial hit (neither was “Dogville”), the highly stylized, enormously depressing “Manderlay” gave Howard the chance to stretch her acting muscles, and critics heaped praise on her performance.
This summer has seen Howard serve as Shyamalan’s muse for a second time with the dismally received “Lady in the Water”. Later this year the talented beauty will grace screens as Rosalind in Kenneth Branagh’s promising film version of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”. 2007 will see Howard sporting blonde hair as comic book babe Gwen Stacy in the hotly anticipated “Spider-Man 3”.