Hollywood is littered with actors who also direct and directors who occasionally act, and then there’s Ron Howard. A massively successful on-camera performer who boasted a wildly popular and acclaimed array of credits by his early 20s, he gave it up entirely once he made his feature-length directorial debut.
That’s not to say Howard has completely abandoned acting, but it’s been a long time since he gave an actual performance. For the last five decades, he’s restricted his involvement in other people’s movies and TV shows to cameo appearances and short-lived guest spots, and he’s not interested in making a full-fledged return.
Even though he’d worked with John Wayne, played a prominent role in George Lucas’ ‘Best Picture’ nominee American Graffiti, and been a staple of ratings juggernauts The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days, the future two-time Academy Award winner was burned out on acting by the time most aspiring thespians begin taking their first steps in the industry.
To put things into context, between his screen debut in 1956’s Frontier Woman and the release of his first self-directed effort, Grand Theft Auto, in 1977, Howard appeared in 15 films and 40 TV shows, making him one of Tinseltown’s most prolific young stars.
However, since he first stepped behind the camera under Roger Corman’s watchful eye and drew a line under his Happy Days tenure in 1984, how many times has he appeared in front of it on the big or small screen playing a character other than himself? Three times on television, with his longest run being a three-episode stint on the 2000s sitcom The Odd Couple. In theatrical releases? Not once.
With that in mind, it seems fair to say that Howard’s acting days are over, outside the odd cameo here and there. Then again, there usually tends to be an exception to every rule, and only rampant nepotism could convince Howard to immerse himself in another filmmaker’s creation for the first time since the ’80s.
“I think that if my daughter, Bryce, cast me in something, that would compel me to put down the directing obligation, put them on hold for a minute and show up,” he told People. As it happens, the next generation of the Howard dynasty follows in her father’s footsteps, although she’s yet to make her first feature as a director.
Dallas Howard has helmed several short films and a couple of documentaries, but her narrative directing experience has so far been limited exclusively to the Star Wars TV shows The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Skeleton Crew. It’s only a matter of time before she makes the jump to features, though, and when she does, it’ll be interesting to see if she recruits her old man to play a fictional movie character for the first time since 1979’s More American Graffiti.
