Bryce Dallas Howard

Born: 2 March 1981
Where: Dallas, Texas

The daughter of Oscar-winning actor/director Ron Howard, she made her feature debut in the chiller The Village.

Howard - whose godfather is dad's Happy Days co-star Henry Winkler - decided to study drama after taking a small part in her father's How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

Ironically, she has never seen a single episode of the TV comedy that made stars of her father and Winkler.)

She received three years of training at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in Manhattan and studied at the Stella Adler Academy of Acting and Theatres in LA.

The Village director M Night Shyamalan cast her to replace Kirsten Dunst as blind adventurer Ivy - without even an audition - having seen her in a Broadway play.