More so than most individuals in Hollywood, Ron Howard has enjoyed a long and successful career as both a breakout television sensation and one of the most talented filmmakers of his generation.
With a filmography that includes the likes of The Andy Griffith Show, Happy Days and the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, the 71-year-old Howard has achieved universal acclaim for almost every venture he’s embarked upon over the last 66 years.
Yet even then, there was a time when the Apollo 13 director was worried that he would always be remembered his stint as a child actor, overshadowing his later accomplishments as an award-winning filmmaker.
According to a new interview with People magazine, however, Howard was able to come to terms with his boyhood roles thanks to his 2016 documentary, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week.
In said documentary, Howard interviewed the two surviving members of The Beatles, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Through their open and candid discussions, Howard was able to better evaluate his own stint as a star on both Happy Days and The Andy Griffith Show.
As Howard remembered it, McCartney’s frank honesty about The Beatles allowed him deeper insight into his own past career as an actor.
“[McCartney] said, ‘A couple of years ago, I finally realized that I’ve done enough with the rest of my life that I didn’t have to be guarded about talking about The Beatles,” Howard recalled. “‘I could embrace that. It wasn’t taking anything away from my life after the Beatles. And it was a real turning point for me. And now I can look at it more openly.’
Applying that advice to his own career, Howard was able to more directly acknowledge his past achievements as an actor while also continuing to forge ahead as a hard-working fillmaker.
“There is something about being really known and recognized for something that happens to you early in your career and then going on and continuing to be creatively ambitious and try to achieve,” the director said.
