Bryce Dallas Howard Thanks the Kardashians For Teaching Her To Accept Her Curves

Bryce Dallas Howard. Photo: Courtesy

“This was really expensive,” Bryce Dallas Howard whispers as she leans over to let a group of publicists check the tags on today’s outfit. The skirt and blouse turn out to be MGSM and McQ, which the actress has paired with Miu Miu shoes. She purchased it all herself at Neiman Marcus, which is now her habit as she’s eschewed the traditional Hollywood method of dressing.

“I don’t work with a stylist,” Howard says, sitting on a couch at Hawaii’s Turtle Bay Resort in late September. She’s here doing press for the Blu-Ray and DVD release of Jurassic World (out October 20), and has turned the trip into a mini (and eleven years belated) honeymoon with her husband, actor Seth Gabel. “It was so empowering to be able to say ‘I want to go shopping and wear sizes that fit me, as opposed to trying to squeeze into next season’s sample that was just worn on a runway,’” she explains. “Suddenly I started feeling so much better about myself. I was like, ‘Look at all these size 6’s! They fit me! It’s amazing.’ That seems like such an obvious thing: Don’t try on clothes that don’t fit you and only fit models. But when I stopped doing that, on principle, I felt so much better. There were so many more options, suddenly.”

Although Howard has worked with stylists in the past, all which she refers to as “talented,” she prefers now to just shop at malls, even when it comes to highly visible press campaigns for blockbuster films like Jurassic World. “The idea is that things actresses are wearing are not available in the stores until next season,” she says. “The dynamic is that wearing those items helps expose people to fashion for next season and I think that’s great. I love seeing that. It’s just not for me.”

Her current style reflects two essential elements: The sense of classic elegance, best exemplified by her style icon Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and an awareness of her curves. “I’ve got curves and I love it so much,” Howard laughs. “I’m so happy to be at a stage in my life where I can really feel so good about showing that off. I want to thank the Kardashians for that.”

For the 34-year-old actress, who is the daughter of acclaimed director and producer Ron Howard, being able to express herself in every possible facet of her life is paramount. Though she spends months shooting films like Jurassic World and the upcoming Disney flick Pete’s Dragon, Howard is also in the midst of finishing her sociology major at UCLA and writing creative non-fiction. Several of her works, inspired by her real life, have actually been published, but Howard refuses to reveal where or under which pseudonyms. “Writing is my favorite thing to do,” she admits. “I’ve published a little bit under different names. It’s so personal. It’s an area in my life where I’m not really ambitious, I just love it so much and so I do it. I do it and don’t plan ‘Oh, I’d like to build this into something.’”

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World. Photo: Courtesy

The actress doesn’t really believe in plans, at all, actually. Her acting career, which launched with 2004’s The Village after a series of smaller roles, mostly in her father’s films, doesn’t follow a prescribed narrative. Howard knows what she’s looking for in a project, but doesn’t necessarily implement any sort of system when taking on roles. For her, it’s about the experience overall, and hopefully that experience yields an interesting story that has been well told. Jurassic World and Howard’s work with director Colin Trevorrow hit the mark on all counts.

“This is probably a weird thing to admit, but I don’t have a vision for my career,” she says. “I’m a third generation actor and I’ve seen first-hand how little plans ever work out, mostly in very positive ways. There’s a kind of experience I crave to have on set and that I crave to also have in the aftermath of a film’s release. I love to work with a filmmaker that has a very strong vision. I love to work on material that I feel has some kind of deeper thematic or philosophical message – that is going add to society rather than take from society. And I love to play characters where I can get lost in them. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not a goal, but something that I crave.”

Working with Trevorrow was especially rewarding for Howard, who continues to have a strong relationship with the director. So much so, in fact, he told the actress he’d been selected to helm Star Wars Episode IX long before the news hit the Internet. “I probably shouldn’t admit to this,” Howard says. “But he told me and I’m really good at secrets and I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my husband. It was killing me to walk around knowing.”

You might expect that much of Howard’s career has been shaped by her father, but it’s actually the opposite. The actress talks to her parents every day – literally – but they don’t frequently discuss her career trajectory unless it’s the simple sharing of news. She talks to them about her kids, Theo and Beatrice, and her life in general, but doesn’t solicit advice on which films to take on.

“I look up to my dad so much,” Howard reflects. “And I look to him, more than anything, as an example. I remember I was auditioning for NYU and I wouldn’t tell my dad what monologue I was doing for the audition. We were on the way for me to go to audition – he was driving me into the city – and he was getting really frustrated. I was like ‘Dad, I’m not going to do it for you. No.’ He stopped at one point and was getting irked and said ‘I am a top ten filmmaker! Why wouldn’t you just do it for me?’ Even now I go to him more for life advice.”

Bryce Dallas Howard in a MGSM top, McQ skirt, and Miu Miu heels at the Jurassic World press junket in Hawaii. Photo: Courtesy

As she sits through another day of press about Jurassic World here in Hawaii, there’s one aspect of the film Howard can’t escape. The question that lingers on everyone’s mind, even months after the film’s theatrical release, is: Why did her character wear unwieldy high heels in the jungle, especially when running away from a T-Rex? It’s a question that led many critics to call the film out for sexist undertones and even resulted in Howard’s co-star Chris Pratt being asked to run in heels on The Late Late Show With James Corden (for the record, Howard raves that Pratt was “amazing” at it). It’s also a question to which Howard has formed a legitimate response.

“It was important for her to be in all white and to be in high heels and to show that this is a woman that believes she fits in in the corporate environment,” she explains. “And then something happens and she has to go into the jungle and she’s completely ill-suited to go into the jungle. I really liked that it wasn’t something where she all of sudden changes into army fatigues and sneakers. First of all, there was no time for that. And she’s the kind of woman who would run a marathon in heels.”

Is Howard sick of these questions? Not at all. In fact, the constant queries give her hope that Hollywood is making strides in the right direction when it comes to complex female characters.

“We’re faced with, right now as audience members and creative people and people with a voice, an opportunity to demand more of the stories that are being told,” Howard says, clearly impassioned by the subject. “And to say ‘It is unacceptable for women to be eye candy. It is unacceptable for less than 30 percent of speaking roles in movies to be female. It’s just absolutely unacceptable.’ So these conversations are essential. But it’s equally important to acknowledge that if there’s a female character in a movie she better be a three-dimensional character. She better have a personality and flaws and things she struggles with and things she overcomes and things she fails at. There’s a lot of honesty to that women looking like, being thrown into this situation and looking completely like a fish out of water, and getting to the point where she is the best version of herself. And yeah, she’s got her heels on.”

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