Ron Howard Biography

Ron Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma. His parents were both actors. Ron first appeared on stage at 18 months and made his screen debut at age four. He had a memorable role in the film The Music Man, and became familiar to millions of Americans as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show. The popular program ran for years in prime time and is still in continuous syndication around the country. At the end of his teens, he joined the cast of another long-running sitcom, playing the leading role of Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. At the same time, he played a leading role in the hit film American Graffiti and in John Wayne's last film, The Shootist. Howard received excellent reviews for these performances, but by then he was determined to become a film director.

The young actor directed several episodes of Happy Days, but could not find a major studio willing to entrust a feature film to a 23 year-old novice, however well-known. At last, Howard struck an unusual deal with independent producer Roger Corman. Corman had taken chances before, on unknown directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Howard offered to act in a film for Corman -- for almost nothing -- in exchange for the opportunity to direct.

Corman had booked an unmade film into theaters on the strength of its title, Grand Theft Auto, without having a script or even an outline of the film. Ron Howard and his father, actor Rance Howard, cranked out the script in two weeks and Ron went into production. The surprising success of Grand Theft Auto allowed Howard to break into mainstream filmmaking, starting with the comedy Night Shift, starring his Happy Days co-star Henry Winkler.

In his acting career, Howard had been typecast as the clean-cut all-American boy. Now he found himself pigeonholed as a director of comedies. He first broke out of this mold with the fantasy film Willow, for producer George Lucas. Soon he was combining comedy and fantasy in the enormously popular films Splash and Cocoon. In addition to his own directorial efforts, he produced the popular films Kindergarten Cop and My Girl.

While continuing his success directing comedies such as Parenthood, and The Paper, he moved successfully into big-budget suspense dramas such as Backdraft, Apollo 13 and Ransom, and tried his hand at the historical epic with Far and Away.

His work on Apollo 13 earned him the 1996 Best Director award of the Directors Guild of America. Since 1986, his films have been produced by Imagine Films Entertainment, Inc., a production company he founded with partner Brian Grazer. Howard is Co-Chairman of Imagine. A Beautiful Mind won four Oscars in 2002, including Best Picture and an Oscar for Ron Howard as Best Director.