Opie from Mayberry grew up to win Best Director and Best Picture
At five, Ron Howard was on set pretending a toy turtle had died. He played Opie Taylor for eight seasons, then Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, and walked away from acting in 1980 to direct. Two decades later A Beautiful Mind earned him the Oscars for both Best Director and Best Picture.
Duncan, Oklahoma, is where Howard arrived on March 1, 1954, the elder son of two performers, Rance Howard and Jean Speegle. His father had been born a Beckenholdt and adopted Howard as a stage name in 1948. Ron was tutored at Desilu Studios between jobs, finished high school in Burbank, and later went to the film school at the University of Southern California without taking a degree. He has said that acting as a child is what first made him think about directing.
Credited as Ronny Howard, he joined The Andy Griffith Show in 1960 and stayed until it ended in 1968. He also turned up in the hit movie musical The Music Man in 1962, as the lisping Winthrop Paroo. As a young adult he played Steve Bolander in George Lucas's American Graffiti in 1973, a film that took $55 million and helped inspire Happy Days, where from 1974 he was the clean-cut foil to Henry Winkler's Fonz. He also acted opposite John Wayne in The Shootist, Wayne's final film.
His first turn behind the camera came through a bargain with Roger Corman: star in Eat My Dust! and you may direct a picture. The result was the cheap 1977 comedy Grand Theft Auto, co-written with his father. Night Shift in 1982 was the breakthrough, followed by Splash with Tom Hanks and Cocoon, which brought Don Ameche a supporting-actor award. Parenthood opened in first place in 1989 and went on to earn $126 million around the world.
Later work ranged from Apollo 13 and Frost/Nixon to documentaries on the Beatles and Pavarotti. He never fully left acting: he was the unseen narrator of Arrested Development from 2003 to 2019, and a self-parodying guest spot on The Studio brought him a 2025 Emmy nomination, the first acting nomination of his career. His honours include a National Medal of Arts in 2003.
Source: Ron Howard
