Bryce Dallas Howard Lands 'The Help'

Bryce Dallas Howard Lands 'The Help'



After starting her career playing the nice girl, Bryce Dallas Howard is showing a mean side. She will join the cast of the DreamWorks screen adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's bestselling novel The Help, playing the antagonistic role of Hilly Holbrook, the beehive hairdo-wearing busybody who is cruel to the black maids and generally rubs everyone the wrong way. Emma Stone and Fences star Viola Davis have already been set for leads in a film that is being directed by Tate Taylor, who wrote the screenplay. Stone plays a young journalist who comes home to write a tell-all of what it is like to be an African-American maid in pre-Civil Rights Mississippi. Shooting begins in July.

This follows a villainous turn for Howard in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, playing Victoria, the crimson-tressed vampire who stalks Bella (Kristin Stewart). That film opens June 30. Howard also starred with Matt Damon in the Clint Eastwood-directed Hereafter.