Bryce Dallas Howard Recalls Dad Ron Howard and George Lucas Having Kids at the Same Time: ‘They Were Parenting Together’

Bryce Dallas Howard is opening up about her dad Ron Howard’s friendship with longtime collaborator George Lucas — and how the fellow filmmakers raised their kids together.

During a panel at MEGACON Orlando in Florida on Saturday, Feb. 8, Bryce, 43, was asked about one of the first times she saw some of the collaborators’ films — and she revealed that she watched many of her dad’s movies in a very special location.

Happy Days alum-turned-filmmaker Ron, 70, and Star Wars creator Lucas, 80, have worked together extensively over the years, beginning when Lucas cast Ron in 1973’s American Graffiti — the coming-of-age comedy-drama that followed a group of recent high school graduates on the last night of summer vacation.

“George has watched, you know, my dad grow up, get married, have kids, all of that,” Bryce said during the panel.

“They worked on Willow together,” she added, recalling the 1988 fantasy-adventure film starring Warwick Davis, which marked one of Ron’s earliest feature films as a director. “And they happened to all have kids at the same time. George’s oldest child was the same age as me, his middle child is the same age as my sisters, next one [is the same age as] my brother.”

Ron and wife Cheryl Howard are parents to Bryce, twin daughters Paige and Jocelyn, 40, and son Reed, 37. Lucas is dad to daughters Amanda, 43 (whom he welcomed with late ex-wife Marcia Lou Griffin), and Katie, 36, son Jett, 31, as well as daughter Everest, 10, whom he shares with wife Mellody Hobson.

“It’s been something where they were just sort of parenting together,” Bryce concluded.

“So yeah, I watched [movies] at Skywalker Ranch,” she joked as the audience cheered, referring to Lucas’ massive Marin County, Calif., ranch, which features film studios, production offices, a lake, a vineyard and Lucas’ house.

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Ron has long been candid about how he was inspired by Lucas to make the switch from acting to filmmaking, including in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2016,

“I had just been accepted to USC Film School. Even though George was only 28 when he was making American Graffiti, he was already — to would-be film students — he was kind of a god,” he said of the Star Wars creator at the time. “We became friends. There was just a mutual interest. He saw that I was very passionate about being a director.”

“The experience of being around American Graffiti and then getting to know George as he moved into Star Wars really tweaked my sensibilities about things,” Ron added. “It was really all about cinema.”