Personal Life

Bryce Dallas Howard was born on March 2, 1981, in Los Angeles, California. She was conceived in Dallas, Texas (the reason for her middle name). Her father, Ron Howard, is a former actor turned Oscar-winning director. Her mother is actress and writer Cheryl Howard (Cheryl Alley). Her famous relatives include her uncle, actor Clint Howard, and her grandparents, actor Rance Howard and actress Jean Speegle Howard. She also has two younger twin sisters, named Jocelyn and Paige, born in 1985, and a brother, Reed Howard, born in 1987.

Bryce was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, because her parents decided to raise their four children as far away from the trappings of showbiz milieu as possible. During most of her childhood she really did not have much access to a TV. She attended Greenwich Country Day School, and Byram Hills High School in Armonk, New York. At that time she discovered existentialism and devoured books by Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. She attended the prestigious Steppenwolf School and Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts camp at Catskills together with her friend Natalie Portman. She applied to drama school as Bryce Dallas, dropping her last name to eschew special treatment because of association with her renown father. From 1999 - 2003 she studied at the Stella Adler Conservatory and at the New York University Tisch School of Arts and graduated with a BFA degree in Drama in 2003. At that time she performed in Broadway productions of classical plays by George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare and Anton Chekhov.

Howard became a devoted vegan since Joaquin Phoenix showed her Earthlings (2003), a documentary about animal cruelty. After seeing that she has consumed no animal products, not even milk or eggs. Her other activities outside of the acting profession include playing basketball and writing. On June 17, 2006, in Connecticut, she married her long-term boyfriend, actor Seth Gabel, whom she met at New York University and had dated for five years. They now live in Hollywood along with their newborn son Theodore Norman Howard Gabel, nickname Theo, whom was born on February 16, 2007.


Career

Young Howard appeared in three of her father's films as an extra, including her appearance as a child together with her mother in Apollo 13 (1995). She made her feature film debut as Heather, a supporting role in Book of Love (2004) by director Alan Brown. Director M. Night Shyamalan was impressed by her performance in a Broadway play and casted her without an audition as a female lead in his two thrillers: The Village (2004) and Lady in the Water (2006). She replaced Nicole Kidman in Dogville's sequel, Manderlay (2005) directed by Lars von Trier and also stared as Rosalind in Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It (2006); a reprise of her stage role that made such an impression on Shyamalan.

She is also billed as Gwen Stacy, a love-triangle between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, in the third installment of the Spider-Man franchise, Spider-Man 3 (2007). Bryce had dyed her naturally red hair blonde for the role (while the naturally blonde Dunst's hair was dyed red for the role of Mary Jane Watson) and was pregnant during the time of production for Spider-Man 3 thus had to wear thick clothing to cover up her growing belly. Bryce also wrote and directed a short film entitled Orchids (2006) starring Alfred Molina that was a part of Glamour magazine's "Reel Moments" series funded by Cartier and FilmAid. She will be replacing Lindsay Lohan for the lead as Fisher Willow in The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2008) directed by Jodie Markell.


Credit: IMDb & Wikipedia


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