"So like any good, closeted young lesbian of the Seventies, I developed a raging crush on Ron Howard from Happy Days."
— Jane Lynch, from her memoir Happy Accidents
So remember that Opie kid from The Andy Griffith Show? Well, Ronald William "Ronny"/"Ron" Howard (born March 1, 1954 in Duncan, Oklahoma) grew up to star in Happy Days and discovered while being one of the biggest sitcom stars in the world that he liked directing. He's good at it, too, as his many awards show. And he was the narrator (and himself!) on Arrested Development.
He is the son of Rance Howard, father of Bryce Dallas Howard and older brother of Clint Howard.
Some of the films he's directed include:
- Grand Theft Auto (1977)
- Night Shift (1982)
- Splash (1984)
- Cocoon (1985)
- Gung Ho (1986)
- Willow (1988)
- Parenthood (1989)
- Backdraft (1991)
- Far and Away (1992)
- The Paper (1994)
- Apollo 13 (1995)
- Ransom (1996)
- EDtv (1999)
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (2000)
- A Beautiful Mind (2001) — Academy Award winner for Best Director
- The Missing (2003)
- Cinderella Man (2005)
- Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series
- The Da Vinci Code (2006)
- Angels and Demons (2009)
- Inferno (2016)
- Frost/Nixon (2008)
- The Dilemma (2011)
- Rush (2013)
- In the Heart of the Sea (2015)
- Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)note
- Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
- Thirteen Lives (2022)
His acting roles include:
- Playhouse 90 (1959): The Boy (episode "Dark December")
- The Twilight Zone (1959): Wilcox Boy (episode "Walking Distance")
- Dennis the Menace (1959–60): Stewart
- The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959–61): various roles (4 episodes)
- The Andy Griffith Show (1960–68): Opie Taylor
- The Music Man (1962): Winthrop Paroo
- Route 66 (1962): Chet Duncan (episode "Poor Little Kangaroo Rat")
- Dr. Kildare (1964): Jerry Prentice (episode "A Candle in the Window")
- The Fugitive (1964): Gus (episode "Cry Uncle")
- The Big Valley (1965): Tommy (episode "Night of the Wolf")
- Village of the Giants (1965): Genius
- I Spy (1966): Alan Loden (episode "Little Boy Lost")
- The F.B.I. (1968): Jess Orkin (episode "The Runaways")
- Daniel Boone (1969): Luke (episode "A Man Before His Time")
- Gunsmoke (1969): Jamie Barker (episode "Charlie Noon")
- Lassie (1970): Gary (episode "Here Comes Glory!")
- Bonanza (1972): Ted Hoag (episode "The Initiation")
- M*A*S*H (1973): Wendell (episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet")
- American Graffiti (1973): Steve Bolander
- The Waltons (1974): Seth Turner (episode "The Gift")
- Happy Days (1974–80): Richie Cunningham
- The Shootist (1976): Gillom Rogers
- Eat My Dust! (1976): Hoover Niebold
- Grand Theft Auto (1977): Sam Freeman
- The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang (1980–81): Richie Cunningham (voice)
- The Simpsons (1998–99): Ron Howard (voice, 2 episodes)
- Frasier (1999): Stephen (voice, episode "Good Samaritan")
- Osmosis Jones (2001): Tom Colonic (voice)
- Arrested Development (2003–19): Narrator (voice)
- The Odd Couple (2016): Stanley (episode "Taffy Days")
- This Is Us (2017–18): Ron Howard (3 episodes)
Tropes associated with Ron Howard's films:
- Associated Composer: James Horner and Hans Zimmer are these, having worked on several of his films between them.
- Biopic: A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man and Rush (2013)
- Contractual Purity: Averted through some of the films he directed:
- Part of the reason Ron wanted to direct Night Shift, a sex comedy about two guys who run a prostitution ring inside of a morgue, was to break away from the wholesome images of his TV characters Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham. Unsurprisingly, when Night Shift producer Brian Grazer shopped the film around town, most studio bosses liked the premise, only to then become skeptical over letting “the kid from ‘Happy Days’” direct Night Shift.note
- When Ron Howard found out that Disney was going to greenlight his next film Splash, he initially balked at Disney’s involvement, not only due to fear of Disney censoring Daryl Hannah’s nude scenesnote (since at the time, Ron Howard didn’t have
final cut), but also because the idea of making a movie for Disney was infantilizing to him, since he felt that it was inevitable that a wholesome guy like Ron Howard would work for a company known for making wholesome movies like “Disney”. note “It seemed just too perfect. Little Ronny Howard grows up to make films for Walt Disney studios. That bothered me. It seemed counterproductive.”
- The Film of the Book: He has directed a number of them including How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, The Da Vinci Code series, In the Heart of the Sea and Hillbilly Elegy.
- Apollo 13 was based mostly off Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
- Genre Roulette: From family films, to those with religious themes, to space movies, to human dramas, to even space opera westerns! Ron Howard seems like a director who likes to do a lot.
- Prima Donna Director: Inverted. He generally does whatever the studio tells him, with very little conflict. Notably, Solo suffered from these in the form of Phil Lord & Chris Miller, and Howard was brought on as a more manageable replacement.
- Production Posse: Tom Hanks and Clint Howard (Ron's brother) often appear in his films, as did Howard's late father Rance Howard. Brian Grazer (with whom Howard runs Imagine Entertainment) is his main producer. Cinematography is usually handled by Salvatore Totino (7 films) or Donald Peterman (4 films), with Daniel Hanley (23 films) and Mike Hill (22 films) being his most frequent editors.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: More on the idealistic in spirit.
