“I never felt cheated by the experience”: Ron Howard explains how he avoided the pitfalls of child stardom
Entertainment is one of the very few industries where teenagers can be called veterans of their craft in the truest sense of the word, with Ron Howard having almost literally spent his entire life in the public eye.
It’s been nearly 70 years since he made his screen debut, which came when he was perfectly cast as an infant in 1956’s Frontier Woman, a western that hit cinemas when he was only two years old. By the time he’d even turned ten, Howard’s filmography included a further five movies and 14 TV shows.
The Andy Griffith Show premiered when he was six and he remained part of the cast for 243 episodes, with Happy Days premiering just two months before he left his teenage years. In between those two points, Howard amassed dozens of credits on screens both big and small, but transitioning into more adult fare is an obstacle that’s tripped up many youngsters.
History is littered with child stars who found huge fame at an early age before slipping out of the public eye completely, and many of them went on to experience tragedy and misfortune. Howard had already set his sights on becoming a director, but he still had to prove himself when he wasn’t that fresh-faced kid anymore.
With his parents Rance Howard and Jean Speegle also being actors, they were fully aware of the dangers that lay ahead. Describing their style as “helicoptering before that was a thing” to Harvard Business Review, the Academy Award winner praised his mother and father for being strict but not harsh and always keeping an eye on the next generation of talent to emerge from the household.
“It’s like a kid who grows up with the circus, you come to know the art and the discipline involved and the camaraderie and the energy around creative problem-solving,” he said. “I could see the grown-ups really hustling, straining, arguing to try to get things right, even on a show that looked as relaxed and down-home as The Andy Griffith Show. There was a lot of laughter, but there was also a lot of hard work and care.”
Having spent almost every waking minute around working professionals both at home and on set, Howard found himself “lucky in that I did not have that adolescent confusion” about the next chapter of his fledgling career. “I never felt cheated by the experience,” he explained. “I always felt advantaged by it.”
Learning the ropes from a very early age was “a huge step in having as constructive a mental health outlook as one can have in that wacky business,” allowing him to not only handle the challenges and struggles that come with being a child who grows into a teenager who then grows into an adult and navigating each step of the casting and audition process along the way, but solidifying his belief that it was the only job he ever saw himself doing.
