Bryce Dallas Howard thrilled to take over 'Twilight' role

Bryce Dallas Howard thrilled to take over 'Twilight' role




Don't be hating Bryce Dallas Howard.

She's really down to Earth. She's got a cute little kid. Her father's the nicest guy in Hollywood, for Pete's sake.

None of that, of course, matters to a certain strain of Twihards. You know the sort: overzealous fans of a fantasy franchise who can't abide the slightest change in their favorite serie

Like when Rachelle Lefevre, the actress who played the wicked Victoria in the first two "Twilight" films, had a scheduling conflict with another movie when she was supposed to start shooting the third vampire romance, "Eclipse." Summit Entertainment, which produces the "Twilights," abruptly fired Lefevre, and Howard -- a huge Twihard in her own right -- agreed to step into the role on something like three days' notice.

Well ...

Howard has wisely refrained from reading Internet chatter ever since. We won't spoil this article by quoting some of the ignorant things that have been posted about her. But we are amused that Lefevre supporters have taken to calling the movie company Scummit.

"One of the slight misconceptions about these films is that they're these huge-budget blockbusters," explains "Eclipse" director David Slade. "These films are made more like independent films. Our schedule -- not just for money reasons but also for actor availability -- was so tight. We shot 'Eclipse' in 52 days; most action movies are shot in double, triple that.

"We had a schedule that was, basically, put together like a jigsaw puzzle, so we had no other choice."

"When Rachelle became unavailable three weeks out from shooting, we had to react very quickly," adds a grateful Wyck Godfrey, one of the series' producers. "Bryce had been on an early list for 'Twilight' and unavailable. We were really fortunate that we could send her the script and she decided she wanted to do it immediately."

If not sooner.

"Because I was the resident Twihard in my group of friends, I was sort of ridiculed for it," reveals Howard, an ardent reader of Stephenie Meyer's source novels. "I was one of the people watching 'Twilight' on opening weekend with high expectations and hoping for it to be really amazing. And I was so elated! I came out and bought another ticket and another ticket and another ticket."

Howard more than understands, then, some fans' displeasure with the casting change.

"That attachment to Rachelle is absolutely warranted, because she is the character for 'Twilight' and she is the character for 'New Moon,' " Howard acknowledges. "What occurred is not ideal in so many ways and really, really unfortunate and devastating for everybody involved.

"That was part of the nervousness I felt about getting into this. The question was, how can one navigate this in some kind of a way so that the movie is what it is meant to be at the end of the day."

Indeed, when Howard joined the vast but tight-knit "Twilight" cast for the "Eclipse" shoot in British Columbia, she wasn't expecting open arms.

"Because I wasn't a part of what happened to Rachelle, no one put blame on me or anything," she was relieved to discover. "I knew that I was stepping into a family that they had already established, though, so I did feel lucky that they were all so great. They're a totally amazing group of people."

Too bad she had to try to kill so many of them. The Victoria story arc climaxes in "Eclipse," as the vengeful vamp sets off something like a monster war to get back at her lover's killer, Edward Cullen, by destroying his human girlfriend, series heroine Bella Swan.

But remember what we said about Howard being such a nice lady? Edward portrayer Robert Pattinson, who had to fight hand-to-undead-hand with her in "Eclipse's" third act, found out just how true that was.

"It's really hard to fight with Bryce because she's, like, the gentlest person," Pattinson reveals. "She always kind of laughs whenever you do anything. So we did a little bit of fighting, halfheartedly. She was afraid of hurting me, for some reason. So most of the really vicious-looking stuff, I did with her stunt double, who was really, really tough. You'll notice the shots with Bryce because we're mostly just rolling around."

Howard actually had a very practical reason for pulling her punches: survival.

"Actors are always nervous about not only hurting each other but maybe, perhaps, hitting each other's face and ending one's career," she says with a laugh. "I just knew that if I rustled Rob's hair, perhaps millions of young women would want to kill me. So I was quite cautious for that reason."

In the end, Howard did create a different Victoria from Lefevre's; one seemingly more poignant in her grief, less exultant in her evil power. But Howard cautions against believing everything you see in "Eclipse."

"There is kind of a significant manipulation occurring," Howard says carefully, not wanting to spoil anything for film fans who haven't read the book. "So the sides of Victoria that are revealed are part truthful and part not."

However her fellow Twihards respond -- and let's face it, they love everything about these movies once they see them -- Howard is moving ahead at full speed.

She's in Clint Eastwood's next directing effort, "Hereafter," co-starring Matt Damon and written by Peter Morgan, who also wrote Bryce's dad, Ron Howard's, last Oscar-nominated effort, "Frost/Nixon."

She'll appear with Seth Rogen in a yet-unnamed comedy. And Howard soon starts filming "The Help," based on Kathryn Stockett's beloved novel about the civil rights era South.

You probably assume (some of those Web haters certainly do) that Daddy's connections got Howard into the business. That was hardly the case. The elder Howards made their home in Connecticut partially to distance their kids from Hollywood's more pernicious influences -- not that being a child actor seemed to have any ill effects on Ron.

Anyway, Bryce showed an interest in acting early on, but hadn't really considered it as a career until she attended New York University. Her folks were neither horrified nor thrilled.

"My parents were totally supportive of anything we kids chose to do as long as we could support ourselves financially, which is obviously really important for an adult," says the actress, who has three younger siblings. "They just didn't want any of us to try to be professional actors before we were 18."

Despite that, all of the Howard kids appeared as extras in some of Ron's earlier movies. But after leaving school, Bryce was drawn to the New York stage. That's how her movie career took off, sans Dad's help. M. Night Shyamalan was so impressed when he saw her in a Broadway show he gave Howard the lead role in his 2004 film "The Village."

Although it doesn't appear part of a conscious plan, Howard has since dropped into several in-progress film series. She replaced "Dogville's" Nicole Kidman in the second chapter of Lars von Trier's uncompleted American Trilogy, "Manderlay," and played John Connor's wife, Kate, in "Terminator Salvation," a role initiated by Claire Danes in "Terminator 3."

Perhaps the uncharitable would say what goes around comes around. Someone else will be playing a part Howard originated, Gwen Stacy, in the next "Spider-Man" movie, which will be a total reboot from the three that have gone before.

How nice is Bryce Dallas Howard?

"I was a fan of the 'Spider-Man' series before I was in it," she says. "I really trust the process of the people who make it. They will have my $10 the day the next movie opens."