“I was begging him for a chance”: the movie that saved Bryce Dallas Howard from Hollywood exile
You’d think that an actor whose father is one of Hollywood’s biggest filmmakers would never struggle to land a role, but Bryce Dallas Howard can admit to experiencing a difficult patch in her career that saw her absent from screens for several years.
The actor made her screen debut in her father Ron Howard’s Parenthood as an audience member, with her next three film appearances also courtesy of her dad. There’s no denying that nepotism runs Hollywood, and Howard can’t argue with the fact that her connections undoubtedly secured her fate as a star.
The mid-2000s saw her take on a bizarre mix of roles, from Lars von Trier’s experimental Manderlay to Kenneth Branagh’s period drama As You Like It and M Night Shyamalan’s fantasy film Lady in the Water, even bagging the role of Gwen Stacey in Spider-Man 3 before appearing in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, so you could certainly call her versatile.
Clearly, nothing is off limits for Howard, whether it be an avant-garde project or a blockbuster, but it seems like her father’s influence is strong, which sees her always veering closer to the mainstream. This has become most evident by her role as Claire in the Jurassic World franchise, which has now become one of her most recognisable endeavours. This first instalment in the Jurassic Park spin-off series managed to gross over $1billion, as did its sequels, Fallen Kingdom, and Jurassic World Dominion.
Despite the huge success of the film and her connections, Howard wasn’t actually convinced she was going to land a role in the franchise. “When I talked to Colin [Trevorrow; director] for the first time, it was just a Skype meeting, and I was begging him for a chance to audition, but basically, I just assumed that I was never going to get a chance to audition,” she once admitted (via Oxford Mail).
All the actor wanted was to be in with a chance, even if she hadn’t been in anything since the 2011 comedy-drama 50/50, adding that she was just trying to get some spoilers from the meeting as a fan, “I wanted to know what they were going to do with Jurassic World, and I think what they chose to do was absolutely inspired.”
But, of course, she not only wound up auditioning for the movie but also winning a leading part alongside the likes of Chris Pratt and Vincent D’Onofrio, delighted to be stuck to the film, considering she is a huge fan of the original Jurassic Park series.
She concluded, “Once I heard what the story was from Colin and obviously eventually read the script, I felt so excited… I don’t think there’s a bigger critic than me of anything that was going to step on the heels of what Jurassic Park was or step on the memory of what Jurassic Park was, I should say, so I’m very proud of this movie.”
Should she have had any doubts regarding her chances of earning an audition? Of course not.
