The actor who absolutely hated working for Ron Howard: “That was tricky”
If there’s one thing that people in Hollywood can agree on, aside from the fact that all those Marvel spinoff series were a bad move for everyone, it’s that Ron Howard is just about the nicest guy who ever yelled ‘Cut.’ For decades, the beloved child actor-turned-Oscar-winning director has been making feel-good movies in nearly every genre and comporting himself with the utmost decency, amiability, and goodwill. Directing is an inherently authoritarian job, but Howard has always seemed like the most humble person to ever take on the role.
You don’t just have to take my parasocial surmising at face value, either. Just ask (almost) any of the actors who have worked with him. Cillian Murphy, who worked with Howard on the harrowing 2015 movie In the Heart of the Sea, was pretty unsparing when he talked about how physically taxing the production was. Playing sailors lost at sea, the actors had to survive off of 600 calories a day and spend most of their time cold and soaking wet.
And yet, Murphy would happily do it all over again. “When you’re doing it for Ron Howard, for you, Ron, we’ll do it,” Murphy said in an interview. “You have to really trust in your director and believe in your director’s vision to go to those lengths.” Clearly, Howard earns the loyalty of his actors in even the most uncomfortable of conditions, which is probably why he’s been able to make so many adventure movies. Viggo Mortensen and Colin Farrell even learned to cave dive for the 2022 film Thirteen Lives.
The director has worked with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood over the years and proved time and again that he is someone that they would readily work with again. But there was one actor who couldn’t stand working with the famously loveable filmmaker. In 1985, Howard made Cocoon, a sci-fi comedy about a trio of care home pensioners who swim in a pool filled with alien cocoons and are invigorated with youthful energy.
The director was barely 30 when the film was released, making the power dynamic a little awkward with at least one of the stars who played one of the care home residents. Veteran character actor Wilford Brimley was only in his fifties at the time, but he gave his young director a hard time. Howard admitted that the actor “could be tough” on him.
“I had to deal with him very differently than I dealt with anybody else,” he recalled in a 2023 interview with The Harvard Business Review. “And it was sometimes unpleasant.” Still, true to his glowing reputation, Howard made a point of highlighting Brimley’s contributions to the movie. “As a great improvisational actor, he also elevated the tone and brought a naturalism and an honesty to Cocoon,” he said. “I recognised that was tricky but also exactly what that sci-fi, seriocomic movie needed, and I made it my business to navigate that and not let him make the set too toxic for the others to flourish.”
A former marine, stunt man, and all-around tough guy, Brimley wasn’t known for being easygoing with any of his directors, so Howard was certainly not an exception. However, when you see his performances in Tender Mercies, The Thing, and The Firm, it’s easy to see why filmmakers would go out of their way to cast him, even if it meant enduring a tense working environment.
