Swimming With The Sharks

It's hard to believe Bryce Dallas Howard's oft-quoted claim that when she was a kid growing up in Greenwich, Conn., she didn't know her dad was famous. Her dad is, of course, the beloved and very famous Opie-grown-into-acclaimed-director Ron Howard. Plus, her mother is the accomplished actress and writer, Cheryl Howard, and her godfather is none other than the one-and-only Fonz, Henry Winkler.

With that lineage and its inherent insider connections-and the fact that she's been on Dad's movie sets observing and acting since she was 7-years-old-comes exposure to celebrity and opportunity few young actresses can imagine. Or, if they can, it's probably with extreme envy. But Howard says she was sheltered from Hollywood-the fame and fortune of it all-by parents who wanted her and her three younger siblings to grow up with decent values and their own self-defined life goals.

"I didn't really connect with the industry until I was in my teens," says Howard. If that's true, she reacted like most kids who are told not to do something: once she had a chance, she did exactly the opposite. At age 15 she attended Stagedoor Manor, a fairly celeb-conscious summer-theater camp whose alumni include Bryce, Natalie Portman, Robert Downey, Jr., Zach Braff and others. You can't become more of an immediate insider than that. But despite these orchestrated steps, Bryce continues to claim her role as reluctant actress.

"When I was growing up, everyone seemed to assume I would become an actress or choose some other career that exercised my creativity and imagination-not so much because the entertainment industry was accessible to me, but because my imagination has so dominated my life," she says. "But I was so frustrated by everyone's assumptions about me and what I'd do, I rebelled against them and wanted to be a lawyer or forensic anthropologist."

Of course, that never happened. Instead, Howard enrolled in NYU's prestigious Tisch School of the Arts undergrad acting program, which assigned her to study at the legendary Stella Adler Conservatory.

The acting BA never happened, either. After finishing the third year of the four-year program, Howard left Tisch to pursue the career everyone had always assumed she'd follow.

"When I decided to leave school, my dad thought I should finish the program and get my degree. But in the end, he supported my choice to work," says Howard. "He's always been supportive, and I'm constantly learning from him. I've learned to think in terms of having a long career. Actors can have very long careers that last until the day we die, but there will be moments when you'll feel like you're a failure or when you're disappointed in yourself. I've learned from my dad that those feelings don't mean you should stop what you're doing. They mean you should try even harder; you should push even further. Perhaps because of failure, you're getting even closer to your ultimate goal."

Howard's concerns about failure were premature. Powered by the gravitas of her famous family, soon after she dropped out of Tisch, she was cast to play Rosalind in a Public Theater production of Shakespeare's As You Like It, which opened April 2003.

The New York Times actually panned her performance, dutifully rapping the knuckles of Opie's offspring, but writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (also a Tisch alum) liked her portrayal of Rosalind well enough to sign her to star as Ivy Walker, a blind woman, in The Village. Ironically, while the film itself was dismissed by many as more M. Night slight-of-hand shenanigans, Howard's performance offered a hint of real talent. "Night had this insane amount of faith in me. He cast me without auditioning me, based on watching As You Like It. It was a life-changing opportunity for me, and a huge challenge."

To her credit, Howard worked arduously to make the blindness believable. She sought help from The Lighthouse (on East 59th Street), an organization that aids the visually impaired, on how to approach Ivy's remarkable and dubious physical behavior. After all, how many blind girls are able to run through wild woodlands in ankle-length skirts? The film's implausible and pretentious plot drew mixed reactions, but she brought seriousness to a role that might otherwise have been dismissible as the all-too-cliché "all-seeing-blind-girl."

From The Village, Howard took it up a notch when she segued into a new set of challenges in Manderlay, the second film in controversial, Danish director, Lars Von Trier's, American trilogy. Cast as Grace, the gangster's daughter, Howard replaced superstar Nicole Kidman, who'd played the iconic role in Dogville, the first film in the trilogy. "I watched Dogville," says Howard, "and I studied Nicole's performance because I really respected and wanted to honor her work. Then I found I was liberated to try my best to be Grace in my own way."

A young ingenue's gotta do what she's gotta do. Howard embraced Von Trier's unique directorial style. During filming, she lived communally with cast and crew. She and all the other actors had to be on set and in character each and every time "action" was called. They performed on barebones blueprint-like sets with limited props and lines on the floor to indicate locations of walls. In tackling racism, exploitation and other thorny themes, the film is physically and psychologically brutal. And, drum roll please, Grace has a difficult nude scene.

"As a director, Lars has a specific vision and he wants complete truth. To get there, I had to cut through my own performer's artifice, to become naked. The work's grueling. You hit a wall. Then, something inside just opens up. It's like therapy," explains Howard.

How'd her famous father feel about the nude scene?

"It's not his favorite scene to watch," she says. "But, seriously, my father has a strong voice and strong convictions as a filmmaker and so does Lars-and that's what's important. They both make films that are true to themselves, so what they ask of actors is always right and reasonable."

It might sound like a bunch of actor BS, but Howard seems to be getting somewhere with her choices in roles and her onscreen presence. She could have easily played the powerful princess and demanded to be let in the studio gates, but at age 25, briefly into a career that she clearly intends to have last for a lifetime, she's now reaching that sink or swim moment.

Lady In The Water, Shyamalan's new film due out in July, is another surreal fantasy with Howard, in the title role, starring opposite Paul Giamatti. Then, there's a reprise of Rosalind-only this time it's in Kenneth Branagh's filmed version of As you Like It, due in theaters this fall.

In 2007 it's finally blockbuster time when Spider-Man 3 has Howard playing Spidey's love interest, Gwen Stacey. She's gone blonde for it, and, perhaps when it releases, she'll step up to the challenge of explaining how choosing to do this particular flick fits into her long-term, life-sustaining, having-something-to-say goals that will (potentially) distinguish her from the Paris Hiltons of today's vapid pop culture. On the subject of Spider-Man 3, she's been lip-locked by the studio until they wind her up and turn her loose for the full frontal promotional campaign closer to the film's release date.

"I've always felt that roles come into my life when I need the lessons they can teach me, and that films are released into society when they're needed to inspire people," says Howard. "I'm very lucky to be in the position I'm in right now-and that terrifies me, but that's a very good thing."

It may be just as terrifying to see how shaky those career legs can be when they make a misstep into the deep end of Hollywood's shark infested waters. Cue the Jaws theme as surreal artifice meets sincere intent. Remember, just beyond the secure confines of Howard's cloistered and carefully manicured village awaits the real world, hungry for fresh young meat to satiate the machine. And now?it's feeding time.