Ron Howard’s Peak: Did He Miss His Own Mark as Director?
Ron Howard once claimed his best films would come later in life, but his golden era arrived sooner than he expected. Explore how his career defied his own predictions.
Attempting to forecast one’s creative prime is a risky business, but Ron Howard was never one to shy away from bold statements. He confidently asserted that his finest work as a director lay ahead, but reality had other plans. From a young age, Howard was told he had a knack for directing, even as he wrapped up his stint as Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show at just 14. The directing bug didn’t bite immediately, but by the time he was cast as Richie Cunningham in Happy Days, he already saw acting as a stepping stone. His ambition was always to move behind the camera, a dream realised at 23 when Roger Corman handed him the director’s chair for 1977’s Grand Theft Auto.
By his early twenties, Howard had already chalked up two hit television series, worked alongside the likes of John Wayne and Henry Fonda, and directed his first feature. It was a meteoric start, but for Howard, it was merely the beginning of a much longer journey.
Expectations and Early Reflections
In 1994, Howard reflected on his career with a touch of surprise, admitting he was
“blindsided”
by the reception to Far and Away.
“We believed we had a $100 million movie,”
he recalled.
“We always scored high at test screenings. Then we got some bad reviews I wasn’t braced for. I think some critics thought, ‘Oh, this is Ron Howard thinking he’s David Lean’. Far and Away, because I’d wanted to make it for so long, felt like a conclusion to the first phase of my career.”
Despite being no novice—Far and Away was his ninth directorial effort—Howard was candid about his own limitations.
“I don’t think I’ve pushed any boundaries yet as a director,”
he admitted.
“I may be a little braver in the future.”
As it turned out, that bravery never quite materialised.
Predictions and Reality
Howard had long maintained that his best work would come between the ages of 50 and 65. Having just turned 40 at the time, he’d repeated this belief so often that his brother Clint eventually offered a blunt warning:
“He looked at me and said, ‘That means you’re in store for a lot of shitty movies.’”
So, did Howard’s prediction come true? The period in question—March 2004 to March 2014—saw him receive Academy Award nominations for Frost/Nixon, and release films such as Cinderella Man, two Da Vinci Code instalments, The Dilemma (which he later regretted), and Rush. Yet, this era was not his most prolific or celebrated.
The True High Point
Ironically, Howard’s most successful period came earlier than he anticipated. Between the ages of 40 and 50, he delivered Apollo 13, widely regarded as his standout film, along with his four highest-grossing features. Ransom, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Beautiful Mind all surpassed $300 million at the box office, with the latter earning him two Oscars. This stretch also included lesser-known but well-regarded works like The Paper, EdTV, and The Missing, marking it as his most impressive run.
Howard’s peak arrived sooner than he had forecast, and the past decade has arguably been his least distinguished as a director.