Ron Howard has been famous for almost all of his 70 years. He’s had a nonstop career in film and television, starting as a toddler.
Besides his impressive career, Ron has also had a long-lasting marriage. He has been married to his wife Cheryl for almost 50 years.
Keep reading to learn more about Ron Howard, his long career, and his long marriage!
Ronald Howard was born on March 1, 1954, in Duncan, Oklahoma. He would grow up to become a Hollywood legend.
Howard started acting when he was only 18 months old, appearing in his first film, Frontier Woman. By the time he was two, he was on stage in The Seven Year
After his early start in the entertainment world, Ron Howard became known for his role as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show from 1960 to 1968.
During this time, playing the son of Griffith’s character, Howard had the support of his parents, who were also in the entertainment business.
Ron remembers a conversation he had with his parents when he was younger. They said, “Remember how we always said, ‘You can do it if you want, but you don’t have to?’ Well if you start this, you can’t quit. You don’t have to do other parts on other shows if you don’t want, but you’d have to keep doing this one.”
Ron Howard understood the message his parents gave him. He says, “I think it was pretty clear at that point that I was enjoying it, and I was good at it.”
In fact, he was really good at it, and he was about to become a big star.
While he was on The Andy Griffith Show, Howard also acted in a movie called The Music Man in 1962. It was a musical and it did really well.
He was a natural talent. Then, in 1973, he starred in American Graffiti. It also had actors like Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, and Cindy Williams, who he would work with again in the future.
In 1974, Ron Howard got a big role as Richie Cunningham in a new show called Happy Days, created by Garry Marshall. The show was on TV from 1974 to 1984 and was watched by people all over the world.
Happy Days was so popular that it led to other shows, like Laverne & Shirley, which starred Cindy Williams and Garry Marshall’s sister Penny, and Mork & Mindy, with Robin Williams as the funny character Mork from Ork.
Before he won a Golden Globe for his role as the innocent teenager on Happy Days, Ron Howard met his high school sweetheart, Cheryl Alley, in 1970. They got married in 1975.
“I met her, and there was never anybody else,” Speaking with People, the director of the Da Vinci Code continued, “She’s unbelievably supportive and always has been. Our compatibility has endured through all kinds of experiences.”
After 50 years of shared experiences, Howard, who earned an Oscar for directing A Beautiful Mind, commemorated the 50th anniversary of his first date with Cheryl on
On November 1, 1970, Ron Howard and Cheryl went on their first date. Ron shared a photo of himself wearing socks with Cheryl’s face on them. He wrote, “We went to see a movie called It’s a Mad Mad Mad World and then got pizza at a place called Barnone’s in Toluca Lake. Quite a start, right?”
He also said they planned to drive the same 1970 VW Bug they drove on their first date. It still runs great, just like their relationship.
Cheryl appeared in some of Ron’s projects and even played herself on a TV show called Arrested Development, which Ron produced and narrated.
Ron calls Cheryl his “good luck charm.” That’s why she appears in every movie he makes. He told the Television Academy this in an interview.
“I got really superstitious about making sure she appears, at least a little bit, in every movie,” Ron said. “It doesn’t have to be a big part, but she’s gotta be in there.”
Besides bringing him luck, Cheryl is also a writer. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in screenwriting.
The couple has four children: daughter Bryce, twins Paige and Jocelyn, and son Reed. They’re also grandparents to six children.
Bryce, a well-known actor, has been in movies like Jurassic World and The Help. Paige started her movie career in Adventureland in 2009. She’s also been in movies like The Employer and Collection.
Reed is a professional golfer. Jocelyn, Paige’s twin sister, keeps her life private.
Ron and Cheryl are about to celebrate their 49th anniversary on June 7th. Ron, who has won an Emmy Award, says that “communication” is the secret to their lasting love.
What’s your favorite movie or TV show featuring Ron Howard, the talented actor, director, and producer?
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Child star Mara Wilson, 37, left Hollywood after ‘Matilda’ as she was ‘not cute anymore’
In the early 1990s, the world fell in love with the adorable Mara Wilson, the child actor known for playing the precocious little girl in family classics like Mrs. Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street.
The young star, who turned 37 on July 24, seemed poised for success but as she grew older, she stopped being “cute” and disappeared from the big screen.
“Hollywood was burned out on me,” she says, adding that “if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless.
In 1993, five-year-old Mara Wilson stole the hearts of millions of fans when she starred as Robin Williams’ youngest child in Mrs. Doubtfire.
The California-born star had previously appeared in commercials when she received the invitation to star in one of the biggest-grossing comedies in Hollywood history.
“My parents were proud, but they kept me grounded. If I ever said something like, ‘I’m the greatest!’ my mother would remind me, ‘You’re just an actor. You’re just a kid,’” Wilson, now 37, said.
After her big screen debut, she won the role of Susan Walker – the same role played by Natalie Wood in 1947 – in 1994’s Miracle on 34th Street.
In an essay for the Guardian, Wilson writes of her audition, “I read my lines for the production team and told them I didn’t believe in Santa Claus.” Referencing the Oscar-winning actor who played her mom in Mrs. Doubtfire, she continues, “but I did believe in the tooth fairy and had named mine after Sally Field.”
‘Most unhappy’
Next, Wilson played the magical girl in 1996’s Matilda, starring alongside Danny DeVito and his real-life wife Rhea Perlman.
It was also the same year her mother, Suzie, lost her battle with breast cancer.
“I didn’t really know who I was…There was who I was before that, and who I was after that. She was like this omnipresent thing in my life,” Wilson says of the deep grief she experienced after losing her mother. She adds, “I found it kind of overwhelming. Most of the time, I just wanted to be a normal kid, especially after my mother died.”
The young girl was exhausted and when she was “very famous,” she says she “was the most unhappy.”
When she was 11, she begrudgingly played her last major role in the 2000 fantasy adventure film Thomas and the Magic Railroad. “The characters were too young. At 11, I had a visceral reaction to [the] script…Ugh, I thought. How cute,” she tells the Guardian.
‘Burned out’
But her exit from Hollywood wasn’t only her decision.
As a young teenager, the roles weren’t coming in for Wilson, who was going through puberty and outgrowing the “cute.”
She was “just another weird, nerdy, loud girl with bad teeth and bad hair, whose bra strap was always showing.”
“At 13, no one had called me cute or mentioned the way I looked in years, at least not in a positive way,” she says.
Wilson was forced to deal with the pressures of fame and the challenges of transitioning to adulthood in the public eye. Her changing image had a profound effect on her.
“I had this Hollywood idea that if you’re not cute anymore, if you’re not beautiful, then you are worthless. Because I directly tied that to the demise of my career. Even though I was sort of burned out on it, and Hollywood was burned out on me, it still doesn’t feel good to be rejected.”
Mara as the writer
Wilson, now a writer, authored her first book “Where Am I Now? True Stories of Girlhood and Accidental Fame,” in 2016.
The book discusses “everything from what she learned about sex on the set of Melrose Place, to discovering in adolescence that she was no longer ‘cute’ enough for Hollywood, these essays chart her journey from accidental fame to relative (but happy) obscurity.”
She also wrote “Good Girls Don’t” a memoir that examines her life as a child actor living up to expectations.
“Being cute just made me miserable,” she writes in her essay for the Guardian. “I had always thought it would be me giving up acting, not the other way around.”
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