How Bryce Dallas Howard Has Been Building Her Directing Career: It’s as ‘Important to Me as Acting’ (Exclusive)

Bryce Dallas Howard may be known to most for her diverse acting roles, but she’s slowly building her second career as a director — and fully intends to continue playing dual roles in Hollywood.

“I love directing and it’s just as important to me as acting and it’s always been happening in the background,” Argyll actress tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.

Bryce, 42, directed the 2019 documentary dadas well as several episodes of multiple Star Wars series, inclThe Mandalorian, The Boba Fett book and upcoming Star Wars: Skeleton Crew.

She tells PEOPLE she looks to multi-hyphenate co-stars like Robert Redford and Jon Favreau for inspiration. Bryce also, of course, looks to his own father’s successful transition from screen to work behind the camera.

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“My dad never intentionally stopped acting, he just started directing full-time and he’s still talking about it. He said, ‘Oh, I’d love to act,'” Bryce says of his father, an Oscar-winning director and Happy days alum Ron Howard. “But he doesn’t set aside anything for it. As for me, hopefully it’s something where I’ll be lucky enough to do both in some capacity.”

Ron Howard.

Lawrence Schwartzwald/Sygma via Getty

Bryce says she followed Ron on set to draw inspiration from his approach. She asked to be a fly on the wall while directing in 2018 Solo: Star Wars story — a request that he “wasn’t really up for” at first. Her past experience and interest in working with special effects companies and emerging technology on projects like Jurassic World franchise (which shared part of the same team with Solo) helped sway him.

“My pitch was like, ‘Really? I know everyone. Please. I just finished working with everyone for the last six months,'” she recalls. “I thought, ‘The crew won’t be uncomfortable with me. I promise. I’ll be invisible.’ ”

Bryce Dallas Howard and Ron Howard.

Daniele Venturelli/WireImage

Curious by nature. Bryce notes that she is “very curious” on set – from how much the animatronics cost to why certain special effects are used. All of this helped build her knowledge base and she found her interest and feedback very welcome: “[On Jurassic] everyone was very open with me and didn’t say, ‘Oh, just sit there little girl.’ ”

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A highly inclusive environment was also present Argyll, her spy action comedy, is out on Friday. Director Matthew Vaughn was “so generous and so open,” Bryce says, and let her into his process. “The funny thing is that Argyll is a movie about spies and in my life, I’ve always had this perspective that it’s like, infiltrating the set. Study, study, study as much as possible,” she tells PEOPLE.

Regardless, Bryce sees every opportunity in the industry as a positive step in her overall journey: “It’s been really great to focus more on gaining experience than finding that perfect thing,” she says. – And I like to work.

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Source: HIS Education