Bryce Dallas Howard has a thing for reptilian creatures, it seems.
Fresh off of her starring role in Jurassic World, Howard is dealing with a whole other kind of ferocious beast (or not-so-ferocious, in this case) in Disney’s Pete’s Dragon.
Pete’s Dragon is a live-action re-imagining of the original animated film. Oakes Fegley stars as young Pete, who wanders off into the woods after a car crash that kills his parents. There, he meets a friendly dragon who ends up raising him until Howard’s character, Grace, and a deforestation crew stumble across him six years later.
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An “obsessed” fan of the original 1977 film, Howard says the movie really triggered nostalgia of her childhood.
Playing the forest-ranger daughter of Robert Redford’s character, who tells tall tales about a mythical dragon, brought to mind fantastical stories she heard from her own dad — famed director Ron Howard.
“I’m one of four kids and he would drive us to school every morning and use us as a test audience and test out the story of his films on us,” Howard said in a recent interview. “I remember him telling me the story of Willow on one of these car rides, I remember the story to Far and Away being told to me on one of these rides, and he would test out a lot of The Grinch.
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“I think it was a powerful exercise for him, to tell his story out loud and get a sense of where the audience would react based on how his very, very honest, blunt children would react.”
(For more, check out our video interview, above.)
‘Pete’s Dragon’ opens in theatres on August 12.
-With files from The Canadian Press
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