The one actor Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg agree is the greatest: “He’s the game-changer”
Even though they’ve been friends for decades, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg have never worked together as actor and director, or director and producer. They have teamed up behind the scenes on a couple of occasions, though, and the results have been mixed.
Howard produced Cowboys & Aliens under his Imagine Entertainment banner, with Spielberg taking an executive producing credit through DreamWorks. The high-concept blockbuster was terrible and bombed at the box office, but their second venture proved to be a lot more fruitful.
Their second, and so far final, partnership came when they both produced Music by John Williams, the documentary tribute to the legendary composer and someone they’re both familiar with. However, there is one name placed squarely in the middle of the Howard/Spielberg Venn diagram: George Lucas.
He hired the former as an actor on American Graffiti and wrote the screenplay and produced Willow. As for the latter, there’s no need to get into the game-changing and industry-shaking bond between Lucas and Spielberg that dates back to the mid-1970s, because it’s one of Hollywood’s most enduring bromances.
They’re respective Academy Award-winning filmmakers with production empires and multi-billion-dollar filmographies, so it’s only natural they’d work with a number of the same actors. Tommy Lee Jones, Cate Blanchett, Tom Cruise, Matthew McConaughey, John Candy, and Anthony Hopkins are just some of the names to have appeared in at least one film apiece helmed by both, but they’re not the most notable.
Howard directed Tom Hanks in Splash, Apollo 13, and the Da Vinci Code trilogy, with Spielberg overseeing Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, Bridge of Spies, and The Post. Naturally, they’re both big fans, going so far as to call him the best in the business.
Spielberg called him both “remarkable” and the one actor he’s “always amazed by,” and even after making so many films together, he still can’t see the joins, saying that in all the time they’ve shared on set, “I never caught him acting.” The Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park legend hasn’t been able to catch him in the act, which makes sense when Howard compared him to an athlete, not an actor.
“He’s that good,” the filmmaker opined. “He’s like one of those athletes who is so effortless that you don’t realise that he’s the game-changer.” It would be nice if they’d re-teamed for some better flicks than the preposterous literary trilogy, but maybe that day will come, since Hanks seems so determined to see what would happen if they fell out on set.
The back-to-back Oscar winner and patron saint of onscreen wholesomeness has spent most of his mainstream career being held in the highest esteem, but as far as Spielberg and Howard can see, there’s nobody better.
