Any film that has Ron Howard’s name connected to it immediately becomes more well-known on a global scale. Hollywood has a lot of respect for the director, producer, writer, and actor all rolled into one. You might say he had all the appropriate connections to break into Hollywood at an early age since he was born into a showbiz family; yet, skill was required to make it to the level that this celebrity who was born in Oklahoma has achieved. He was born in Oklahoma.

The man who is now a father of four who got his start as a child actor on “The Andy Griffith Show” when he was just six years old has gone on to become one of the most successful filmmakers of all time.

There are a great number of instances of child actors who, once they reach a certain age, are never heard from again, but this hardworking man went on to appear in the coming-of-age film American Graffiti, which received widespread acclaim and went on to become one of the most profitable films in history.

The next year, he was cast as the morally upstanding Richie Cunningham in the television comedy “Happy Days.” This is the character for which the majority of us know him.

He was born in Oklahoma, but when he was four years old, his family relocated to California. Both his mother, Jean Speegle Howard, and his father, Rance Howard, were in the entertainment industry. His mother was an actress, while his father was an actor, director, and writer.

Ron grew increasingly interested in what goes on behind the scenes when he was acting in the long-running program “Happy Days.” He made his directorial debut in 1977 with the low-budget comedy/action picture Grand Theft Auto.

Night Shift, starring Michael Keaton, Shelley Long, and Henry Winkler, was the film that gave him his big break as a director. It was released in 1982. Since that time, he has directed a number of critically acclaimed films, including Splash, Cocoon, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Cinderella Man, The Da Vinci Code, and the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, for which he earned the Academy Award for Best Director.

Tom Hanks, who has been in a number of films that were directed by Ron Howard, stated that Howard, who is 66 years old, reminded him more of a “elder brother” in an interview with the publication Arts and Culture.

“When you meet directors, they’re often older, they’ll be dressed in a suit, and they’ll speak about things in a really high-falutin’ manner,” he said. “But Ron was a man who looked like my elder brother, and he kept asking me, ‘What do you think of this?'” I was wondering what your thoughts were on it. I immediately saw that we would have a productive partnership.”

Howard is not only responsible for launching his own work, but also, as co-chairman of his own production firm Imagine Entertainment, he is responsible for launching blockbuster programs such as 24, Felicity, and Arrested Development, all of which he narrated and helped launch to become great successes.

“When you meet directors, they’re often older, they’ll be dressed in a suit, and they’ll speak about things in a really high-falutin’ manner,” he said. “But Ron was a man who looked like my elder brother, and he kept asking me, ‘What do you think of this?'” I was wondering what your thoughts were on it. I immediately saw that we would have a productive partnership.”

Howard is not only responsible for launching his own work, but also, as co-chairman of his own production firm Imagine Entertainment, he is responsible for launching blockbuster programs such as 24, Felicity, and Arrested Development, all of which he narrated and helped launch to become great successes.

Out of the more than one hundred prizes for which he has been nominated, Howard has taken home two Academy Awards for Best Director and one for Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind, as well as four Emmys, a Grammy, and two Golden Globes.

Aside from his successful career in the entertainment industry, Howard has been married to the actress Cheryl Alley for more than four decades, and the pair has four children together.

In memory of his parents, Howard recently established at the University of Oklahoma a theater scholarship that will be awarded to a student from a rural community anywhere in the United States.

According to what Howard stated in a statement, the fact that both of his parents attended the institution to study acting and were originally from more rural parts of the state was significant in “changing the path of their life as well as the course of our family history.”

Because most of us came of up watching this Hollywood icon on television, we tend to forget that he was involved in the production of a staggering number of critically acclaimed films behind the scenes.

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