Biography of Bryce Dallas Howard

Click to View Photos of Bryce Dallas Howard

Bryce Dallas Howard (born March 2, 1981) is an American actress and filmmaker. She is the eldest daughter of actor and filmmaker Ron Howard. Born in Los Angeles, Howard attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, initially leaving in 1999 to take roles on Broadway, but officially graduated in 2020. While portraying Rosalind in a 2003 production of As You Like It, Howard caught the attention of director M. Night Shyamalan, who cast her in the psychological thriller The Village (2004) as the blind daughter of a local chief. She subsequently starred in the title role of Shyamalan's fantasy thriller Lady in the Water (2006), playing a naiad who escapes from a fantasy world.

Howard's performance in Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It (2006) earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination, and she subsequently appeared as Gwen Stacy in Sam Raimi's superhero film Spider-Man 3 (2007). She went on to appear as Kate Connor in the action film Terminator Salvation (2009) and Victoria Sutherland in the fantasy film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), both of which were financially successful but garnered mixed reviews from critics. She earned acclaim for portraying a "fair-weather" girlfriend in the comedy-drama 50/50 (2011) and a racist socialite in the period-drama The Help (2011), winning a Screen Actors Guild Award for the latter.

Howard gained wider recognition for starring as Claire Dearing in the adventure film Jurassic World (2015) and its sequels Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022), the first two of which rank as her most commercially successful films. She also portrayed a forest ranger in the adventure film Pete's Dragon (2016) and Sheila Dwight, Elton John's mother, in the biopic Rocketman (2019). Her directorial ventures include a segment of the television drama film Call Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013), the documentary Dads (2019), and episodes of the Disney+ space fantasy series The Mandalorian (2019–2020) as well as The Book of Boba Fett (2022). She is married to actor Seth Gabel, with whom she has two children.