Bryce Dallas Howard: The Actress Who’s Spreading Her Wings Beyond Hollywood’s Nepo Baby Label
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. Her 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, the writer Cheryl Howard, “were, like, ‘We’re not bringing them around the actors any more’”.
As reported by The Times in an interview with Howard, she has had a long and illustrious career in Hollywood, 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.
The 44-year-old’s new film, Deep Cover, is a British comedy thriller directed by Tom Kingsley, who made Ghosts and Stath Lets Flats, and written by the Jurassic World veterans Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, alongside the 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 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.
According to The Times, Howard’s experience on the set of Deep Cover was a thrilling one, with the actress witnessing the reinvention of Bloom, who can tend towards earnestness when he is not being overshadowed by Katy Perry, his space-travelling pop-star wife — but here is a hoot. His Method-acting character Marlon 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.”
As quoted in The Times, Howard says, “Orlando steals the movie. 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 improvisation while studying at New York University and watched improv comedy on both sides of the Atlantic in preparation for the film.
Brits 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.
In conversation with The Times, Howard expressed her admiration for comedians, 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.”
Howard’s stories are told with an acknowledgment of the privileges of being a “nepo baby”. Most actors hate being asked about nepotism, 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 Jean Speegle Howard, an actress.
As noted by The Times, that’s what happened with M Night Shyamalan, the 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.
Howard also spoke to The Times about 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.”
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.”
Acting can be less blissful than that, as 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 film-maker.’ I went, ‘Lars, what are you trying to see?’ and he said, ‘Your angry face. I don’t know what it looks like.’”
It takes a lot to faze Howard — certainly she’s not bothered by the countless people who mistake her for the actress Jessica Chastain. “Whenever that happens I feel very good about myself because it means I put myself together and brushed my hair,” she says.
Howard’s unflappability has served her well as a director, with two documentaries and several episodes of The Mandalorian and other Star Wars shows under her belt. Possible directorial projects include a remake of the 1986 kids’ sci-fi film The Flight of the Navigator.
Deep Cover is released on June 12 on Prime Video.
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