Bryce Dallas Howard knows her way around Hollywood: Her father, the actor and director Ron Howard, has helped doors. Howard acknowledged hyper-privileged world she grew up within in an interview with The Times Sunday — and also admitted she was “sort of delighted” by abusive behavior she suffered at the hands of Danish director Lars von Trier.
Howard admitted that the director, who she worked with on 2005’s “Manderlay” attempted to evoke anger from her through tactics that aren’t exactly great. As soon as she was arrived on set, Howard said, she was told to report to von Trier’s office.
“He started insulting me: ‘Your father’s a terrible filmmaker.’ I went, ‘Lars, what are you trying to see?’ and he said, ‘Your angry face. I don’t know what it looks like,’” she explained. He then threw a glass of water in her face. “So I threw a glass of water in his face. He goes, ‘Why did you do that?’ and got up and left. That was my introduction to the Lars von Trier experience, but it wasn’t like I went to my room and cried or anything. I was sort of delighted by it.”
(The director has been more seriously accused of abuse by the Icelandic singer Bjork. In a series of since-deleted Facebook posts, Bjork said she was “punished” by an unnamed director after she turned down his sexual overtures. Von Trier is the only director Bjork has worked with on a film set.)
Howard also said she never saw her upbringing as a disadvantage in terms of her own career aspirations.
“At the beginning of my career people would ask — and I was always so shocked by this — ‘Do you feel it’s been a disadvantage?’ And I was like, ‘Disadvantage?’ When you’re an actor, you need to capture a casting director or director’s attention, but when you’re someone who’s related to someone else, there’s an inherent curiosity there.”
Howard added that not only was she born into privilege, her father is the son of director, writer, and actor Rance Howard and actress Jean Speegle Howard. “So I got to have access in a way that, even if you were born into it, most people wouldn’t,” she admitted.
These days Howard has also added director to her own slew of titles, as she’s led two episodes of “The Mandalorian” and a handful of documentaries, but she insisted she doesn’t want to leave acting “as my dad has done. That would be really heartbreaking because I learn so much being on a set. I have so much fun.”
Read the interview at The Times.
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