Ron Howard on the “common thread” that united the “toughest” actors he ever worked with
Nothing comes easy in Hollywood, which makes it all the more impressive that Ron Howard abandoned the career that made him a household name in favour of trying his hand at something completely different instead.
Common sense indicates that when a performer breaks out by starring in two hugely popular TV shows by the time they left their teenage years, then they’d continue to pursue acting for the rest of their days having gotten an early taste of on-screen success. However, Howard wasn’t that kind of creative.
The first episode of Happy Days aired just two months before the star turned 20 years old, and it kept him gainfully employed for a decade on a cultural landmark and ratings juggernaut. Before that, he’d played Opie Howard in The Andy Griffith Show for 243 episodes, and between those two points, he took second billing in George Lucas’ ‘Best Picture’ nominee American Graffiti and John Wayne’s final feature The Shootist.
By all accounts, it would have been a lot easier and much less hassle for Howard to pursue acting, but he never saw himself as having what it took to achieve longevity as a performer. Instead, once Roger Corman handed him his directorial debut on Grand Theft Auto in 1977, he never looked back after turning his hands to filmmaking full-time.
He’s barely acted since, but there must have been huge pressure on the unproven upstart when he decided to abandon the vocation that made his name to completely reinvent himself from the ground up. Of course, with a pair of Academy Award wins to his name and a filmography that’s accrued billions of dollars at the box office, his choice was vindicated a long time ago.
Howard knew that he’d have to work harder than most to claw his way up an entirely different kind of ladder, though, but he’d witnessed some genuine legends of stage and screen give the business their all right up until the end, which instilled in him the belief that a relentless work ethic would stand him in better stead than most.
‘The Duke’ was nearing 70 when he took Howard under his wing on The Shootist, co-star James Stewart was in the same age bracket and ended a five-year exile from screen acting as a favour to his friend Wayne, while Bette Davis was already a septuagenarian when the sitcom star-turned-director had to win her over on made-for-television movie Skyward, but they weren’t interested in phoning it in.
In an interview with Men’s Journal, Howard reflected on how seeing such esteemed and grizzled veterans refusing to coast on their laurels stuck with him for the rest of his days. “If there was a common thread with these folks – Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Glenn Ford – it was the work ethic,” he recalled, with Davis getting a special mention for being “the toughest of them all.”
With Howard now into his 70s and still going strong, it’s clear that witnessing cinema’s elder statesmen continuing to give their all stood him in very good stead for a long-lasting second wind as a director that still shows no signs of even starting to wind down.
