Bryce Dallas Howard Shares Touching Tribute to Dad Ron on His 71st Birthday: ‘I Love You More Than Words Can Say’

Bryce Dallas Howard is celebrating her dad Ron Howard‘s birthday with a heartfelt tribute.

On Saturday, March 1, Bryce, 43, shared a post on Instagram in honor of her dad turning 71. The actress — whose own birthday is a day later, on March 2 — included a photo of the father-daughter duo sitting together at a table at a gala, with each of them grinning at the camera as Bryce rested her head on her dad’s shoulder.

“I love you so much Dad, more than words can say 🥹❤️,” the actress captioned the sweet photo. “Happy Birthday @realronhoward!⁣”

The Jurassic World actress has always been candid about her close relationship with her filmmaker dad. Last month, the two stars appeared together on a panel at MegaCon in Orlando, Fla., and the Happy Days alum spoke about wanting to protect his daughter from the more complicated aspects of becoming a child actor.

Opening up about his early life in Oklahoma, Ron recalled how his own parents — director Rance Howard and actress Jean Speegle — encouraged him to start working as a child actor on shows including The Andy Griffith Show (in which he starred as Opie Taylor).

Like himself, Ron said Bryce began to “show a real aptitude” for performing when she was just a child — but he explained that he worried at the time about her falling into his shadow.

“She would ask about [acting], and my wife Cheryl and I would say, ‘No, we can’t let you be a child actor,’ ” the Oscar winner said. “We didn’t have the bandwidth to do what my parents did, which is really supervising… And plus, I felt like that the Opie mythology was a little bit tough, you know, too much to ask a kid to face as a child performer.”

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In December, Bryce reflected on visiting her dad’s film sets as a kid during a panel at Steel City Con in Monroeville, Pa., telling the audience that “my childhood was going and spending time with him on set.”

“For a few reasons,” she recalled. “One is I’m the oldest of four, and so I wanted to be on set, and so it just made it easier, one less kid for my mom to be wrangling during the day. So I was really kind of tagging along with him. And also because he was working professionally from the time he was 18 months old, and his parents were in the industry. He just thought it was normal to bring your kid to work every day.”

Bryce also shared that she would love to work with her dad someday — in a bigger capacity than just visiting his sets or working as an extra.

“When I was like 7, I was an extra, but I’ve never worked with him professionally as an actor, with dialogue and all of that,” she told the audience at Steel City Con. “But I want to. I want to very badly. And I would always sort of harass him about it. And now I’m like, ‘Let’s talk, dude.’ “

Ron shares Bryce with wife Cheryl Howard, whom he met in high school and married in 1975. They also share three other children: twin daughters Jocelyn and Paige, 40, and son Reed, 37.