Bryce Dallas Howard (born March 2, 1981) is an American actress and director. Howard was born in Los Angeles and attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, leaving in 2002 to take roles on Broadway but graduating in 2020. While portraying Rosalind in a 2003 production of As You Like It, Howard caught the attention of director M. Night Shyamalan, who cast her as the blind daughter of a local chief in the psychological thriller The Village (2004). She later starred in the leading role of a naiad who escapes from a fantasy world in Shyamalan’s fantasy thriller Lady in the Water (2006).

Howard’s performance in Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It (2006) earned a Golden Globe Award nomination and she subsequently appeared as Gwen Stacy in Sam Raimi’s superhero film Spider-Man 3 (2007). She went on to appear as Kate Connor in the action film Terminator Salvation (2009) and as Victoria in the fantasy film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), both of which were successful but garnered mixed reviews from critics. Howard’s roles as a “fair-weather” girlfriend in the comedy-drama 50/50 (2011) and as a racist socialite in the period-drama The Help (2011) brought praise.

Recognition of Howard widened when she co-starred as Claire Dearing in the adventure film Jurassic World (2015), and its sequels Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022), the first two of which rank as her most successful films. She also portrayed a forest ranger in the adventure film Pete’s Dragon (2016) and Sheila Dwight, Elton John’s mother, in the biopic Rocketman (2019), voicing Yaddle in Tales of the Jedi (2022).

Howard directed the documentary Dads (2019), and episodes of the Disney+ space western series The Mandalorian (2019–) and The Book of Boba Fett (2022). Her father is actor and filmmaker Ron Howard and she is married to actor Seth Gabel, with whom she has two children.