BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD Actress keeps name of her famous family

Her grandfather changed his name to be 'accessible.'
SCRIPPS HOWARD
The new M. Night Shyamalan movie "The Village" features a fresh face with a familiar name: Bryce Dallas Howard. The daughter of actor-turned-director Ron Howard and actress Cheryl Alley Howard, she segued from studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a Broadway production of "As You Like It" to the big screen.
Howard, who like her parents, younger twin sisters and younger brother, has red hair, says she never dreamed of asking for a role in one of her father's films, though as a child she was an extra.
"My dad used to say that we were his little good-luck charms, and so there were redheads scattered about in the background," she says.
The name game
Howard says for a time she tried to distance herself from her famous surname.
"When I was younger I just used Bryce Dallas," says the 23-year-old. "Aside from the fact that it sounds like a porn star," she says, her dad explained how his father, an Oklahoma farmer's son born Harold Beckenholdt, who wanted to become an actor, "created" the name Rance Howard because "he thought that was much more accessible."
"And he said, 'You know, it's your legacy ...'"
"I'm really proud of my dad, and whatever assumptions people make about me, it's all right, because I get to have the father that I do and that outweighs anything."