Bryce Dallas Howard is reflecting on her childhood — which included having some unusual interests.
“When I was growing up, I had a lot of difficulties learning and communicating,” Howard, 44, told U.K. newspaper The Independent in an interview published on Saturday, June 7. “I was always very happy and smiley, but not extremely verbal. It was unclear what intelligence was there, and how much I was really processing.”
Bryce noted that her parents — Cheryl Howard and famed director Ron Howard — took her to a psychologist, who went on to talk to them about what she learned. (The couple are also parents to 40-year-old twin daughters Paige and Jocelyn and 38-year-old son Reed.)
“Can we talk about the dead babies?” Bryce recalled the therapist asking. “Because Bryce talks a lot about dead babies.” The outlet noted that Bryce laughed while recalling this incident.
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Looking back, Bryce noted that she was “such a messed up kid” with unique interests and curiosities.
“I would walk around the Disney lot reading about euthanasia,” she explained. “But I also wasn’t dark. There was just a sort of intensity to my feelings and the stories I was curious about.”
Now, Bryce has followed in her dad’s industry footsteps and starred in films such as 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, 2024’s Argylle and upcoming Prime Video movie Deep Cover. Despite her fame, Bryce noted that she enjoys an ordinary life.
“The reality is that I hardly ever get recognized to this day,” she said. “I live a totally normal life – partly because I’m a shut-in and don’t leave the house that much, but I’ve also just been incredibly lucky. I was never followed around by photographers.”
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Bryce tied the knot with husband Seth Gabel in 2006, with whom she shares son Theodore Norman, 17, and daughter Beatrice Jean, 13. In 2019, the family of four relocated from California to New York.
“We were in upstate New York for my brother’s wedding, and we’d been talking about moving the family from Los Angeles back to New York. And we kept driving past this one stone house that we loved. But it wasn’t for sale,” Bryce recalled to Architectural Digest in April 2019. “Then, on our last day there, we got an email saying that very house was about to hit the market. When I walked in there, it was like completely immaculate inside too. So we ended up buying it.”
