(Credit: Dick Thomas Johnson)
Thu 14 August 2025 18:45, UK
A literal child deciding they’d rather be a director than an actor sounds ridiculous, until you realise Ron Howard had more experience as a performer by the time his age reached double digits than most people twice, or even three times, his age.
The cherubic star of The Andy Griffith Show was nothing if not prolific, and by the time he wrapped his run as Opie Cunningham at the tender age of 14 in 1968, he’d supplemented his breakout series with appearances in over 20 TV shows and half a dozen movies, which is a lot for someone so young.
Most teenagers don’t have to worry about being burned out from over a decade of working constantly, but Howard wasn’t like most in his demographic. He’d been acting since before he could walk or talk, and by the time he was midway through Happy Days, he’d had enough.
By then, he already knew he wanted to segue from being in front of the cameras to behind them, and his mind was definitively made up in 1967. It was a stellar year for Hollywood, with Howard explaining to The New York Times that even though he was a big fan of watching films, it wasn’t until then that he sat up and took notice of how they were made and who was making them.
“When people asked me back then what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said a basketball player, and I meant it,” he said. “But I loved going to the movies. When I think back on those days, there are a cluster of films that I kind of mix together in my mind: Bonnie and Clyde, Cool Hand Luke, In the Heat of the Night. But The Graduate had the biggest impact on me.”
Those four titles were among the best 1967 had to offer, but it was Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Charles Webb’s novella that ended the year as its highest-grossing release, before winning the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’. Fittingly, The Graduate‘s only Oscar from seven nominations was for its directing, with Howard convinced by the time the credits rolled that he wanted to wield the megaphone.
“This is the movie that made me realise what it meant to direct a movie, what was really involved,” he offered. “It’s the one I went back to, again and again. I just kept revisiting it. At first, not analysing, just enjoying it. But then, as I saw it more and more often, analysing it.”
It’s been almost 60 years since Dustin Hoffman’s breakout role, and The Graduate remains one of Howard’s all-time favourite movies. He’d grown up as a fan of cinema, and learned more about the business by being on set than he would from sitting in the audience, but it wasn’t until he laid eyes on Nichols’ classic for the first time that he was determined to follow in his footsteps.
Ten years later, he got his wish when Roger Corman handed him the reins on Grand Theft Auto, and he hasn’t looked back. Just when he was starting to fall out of love with acting, The Graduate came along to remind him that there were other ways to carve out a living in Hollywood, and one that he’d actually enjoy.
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