Ron Howard
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35)
filming in Rome,” she says. “There was
a small orchestra performing. As we
approached, they saw Ron and shifted
to the theme from Happy Days.”
It was low-budget movie king Roger
Corman who gave young Howard his
escape opportunity, by hiring him
to direct Grand Theft Auto in 1977. “I
loved it that the director kind of got to
play with everybody,” says Howard. “I
liked hanging around with the crew,
and I loved being around the actors.”
After departing Happy Days in 1980,
he would never again take on a major
TV or movie role.
By then, Howard had married his
childhood sweetheart, Cheryl Alley,
whom he met during his junior year
at John Burroughs High School in
Burbank. The pair never really dated
anyone else. “I think it’s kind of mag-
ic,” Howard says of his 34-year mar-
riage. “Through high school and into
college, I think we knew how much
we meant to each other and what we
could do for each other. She brings out
the best in me.” His secret to marital
bliss? “At the end of the day,” he says,
chuckling, “my expectation is not that
I’m going to have the last word!”
In the early years of their marriage,
Cheryl—who published a novel, In
the Face of Jinn, in 2005—concen-
trated on caring for the couple’s four
children: daughters Bryce Dallas,
now 28, and twins Jocelyn Car-
lyle and Paige Carlyle, 24, and son
Reed Cross, 22. The family moved
from Los Angeles to Connecticut
in 1985, then settled in Westchester
County in 1994. Neither Ron nor
Cheryl wanted to raise the children in a
Hollywood environment, and, though
Bryce and Paige are now pursuing act-
ing careers, they were not allowed in
“the business” until adulthood.
Howard seamlessly melded work
and family. He brought the kids along
on location, letting his actors bring
their kids to the set if they needed,
allowing the making of his films to
become family affairs. “I’m really
most comfortable on a film set or with
my family,” Howard explains. “I’m
not a very adventuresome person.
People say, ‘You love space. Would
you want to go on the shuttle?’ Well,
no, I wouldn’t. At the end of my life,
I’d rather have made another film or
spent time with my family.”
While the family grew, Howard
steadily built his directing career.
After Grand Theft Auto he directed
the dark comedy Night Shift. Then
came the movies Splash, Parenthood,
Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, The Da
Vinci Code, and Frost/Nixon. For each
project Howard had a definitive vi-
sion. “He knows what he wants,” says
Winkler, who is Bryce’s godfather. “He
is big enough to include the people
he’s working with, but ultimately he’ll
say, ‘That’s really, really good, but if
you do it this way, I’ll print it.’”
Because of his style, Howard en-
genders tremendous loyalty. He
works with many of the same ac-
tors again and again: Winkler, Tom
Hanks, Russell Crowe. His dad and
brother have appeared in nearly all
his films, and in 1986 he started his
own production company, Imagine
Entertainment, with partner Brian
Grazer. “I’m a little shy,” says Howard,
“so if I know that I work well with
somebody, that’s meaningful. I create
an environment where people feel
they can collaborate. But I also need
people who, in crunch time, are going
to be loyal and responsive to my deci-
sions. You can’t go shoot it 18 ways.”
Intensely personal in his beliefs and
causes—he quietly supports the Boys
and Girls Clubs—Howard certainly
is not the type of celebrity who’ll
chain himself to the fence of a nuclear
reactor to make a point. “I generally feel that show business people,
unless they really make themselves
learned in an aspect of government,
ought to be cautious about using
their visibility to sway people,” he
says. Still, late last year, he felt the
urge to do something to support
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He (CONTINUED ON PAGE 66)
