Able to capture full attention from the audience through her stunning performances that have been brilliantly displayed in the projects she joined to make them see her for herself only instead of merely a daughter of renowned director Ron Howard, Bryce Dallas Howard sure is one promising young talent worth noticing among other starlets of her generation. The oldest of four children the filmmaker has with his wife, a writer named Cheryl Alley, Bryce was born on March 2, 1981 in Los Angeles, California, and spent most of her early life in Greenwich, Connecticut where she attended and graduated from Greenwich Country Day School in 1996. Though initially denied her fondness in acting due to her frustration over people's assumption that she would follow her father to work in film industry, the overwhelming desire turned out to be really hard to resist as she grew up so that the girl finally gave in during her mid teens.

Already got slight taste of cinematic experience through brief appearances in "Parenthood" (1989) and "Apollo 13" (1995), Bryce thus enrolled in the New York University Tisch School of the Arts to study drama while persistently honed her craft at the Stella Adler Conservatory to then see herself involving in a handful of stage productions before eventually earned her BFA degree in 2003. Much to this lovely redhead's surprise, the year unexpectedly also turned out to be the turning point in her life when she was approached by director M. Night Shyamalan after he witnessed her performance in a Broadway presentation of Shakespeare's "As You Like It." Deeply taken by her fine talent, the filmmaker instantly revealed his intention to give her the lead part in his next feature and without conducting any auditions, directly submitted the beauty's name alongside Joaquin Phoenix's plus Adrien Brody's in the cast list.

Entitled "The Village" (2004), the picture sure was such a great vehicle for Bryce to pave her way in Hollywood as it satisfyingly garnered more than 114 million U.S dollar in its domestic gross, even later wonderfully led her to secure a nomination at MTV Movie Awards in Breakthrough Female category by 2005. Undoubtedly rising to widespread prominence following the success, the road therefore was rather velvety for the actress to undergo since roles kept coming in afterwards, like in "Manderlay" (2005), "As You Like It", and "Lady in the Water", the latter two both getting released in 2006. Still in 2006, she also landed her first behind-the-camera experience, writing and directing a short drama feature entitled "Orchids" as part of Glamour magazine's "Reel Moments" series funded by Cartier and FilmAid International.

The brightness of her star displayed more radiant light when Bryce next got billed as Gwen Stacy in one of the 2007's blockbusters, "Spider-Man 3", which scored over $336.5 million in domestic market only. Prior to the superhero flick's release on May 4, however, she had already welcomed Theodore Norman Howard Gabel on February 16, her first son with actor Seth Gabel whom she married on June 17, 2006 after dating for five years. Though undoubtedly enjoyed her new role as a mother, the beauty took no delay to secure her next acting stint in "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond" (2008) in which she replaced Lindsay Lohan to play Fisher Willow, the disliked 1920s Memphis debutante daughter of a plantation owner with a distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her.