Actress Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of director Ron Howard, is best known for her roles in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and Lady In The Water as well as genre films such as Spider-Man 3, Terminator: Salvation and the upcoming The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Now audiences will get to see a different side of the actress as she speaks the words of the great playwright Tennessee Williams in the adaptation of his long-forgotten screenplay The Loss Of A Teardrop Diamond, opening in theaters on December 30th. In the film, which Howard actually shot after Spider-Man 3 and before last summer’s Terminator: Salvation, the actress plays the role of Fisher Willow replacing Lindsay Lohan who had originally been cast in the part. We recently had an opportunity to sit down with Bryce Dallas Howard to discuss her new film, the work of Tennessee Williams, acting with Chris Evans and the difference between making this film and some of her past work.

Widely considered the most important American playwright of the post-WWII era, Tennessee Williams wrote the The Loss Of A Teardrop Diamond screenplay at the height of his late-50’s heyday, amid such classic plays, (which themselves were adapted into classic films) as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Suddenly, Last Summer,” “Sweet Bird of Youth,” and “Orpheus Descending.” Set in the Roaring Twenties in Williams’ (and director Jodie Markell’s) home town of Memphis, the film tells the story of Fisher Willow (Howard) a headstrong young heiress who chafes under the constraints of proper Southern society, and who rebels by asking the impoverished but handsome son of her father’s caretaker, Jimmy Dobyne, (Chris Evans) to escort her to the major social events of the season. The relationship is purely a business arrangement at the outset, with Fisher paying for Jimmy’s time and attention, but when she discovers that she really loves him, she finds it impossible to re-write the rules and earn the affection she tried to buy. Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Evans, Ellen Burstyn, Ann-Margret, Jennifer Spies, Mamie Gummer, Will Paton, and Jessica Collins and directed by Jodie Markell, The Loss Of A Teardrop Diamond opens in theaters on December 30th.

Photographer Michelle Ford for Black Book Magazine had the chance to photography Bryce. The image has been added to the gallery and here is what she had to mention in her blog:

Back in October I had the privileged to photograph actress Bryce Dallas Howard for Black Book Magazine. You may know her best for playing the blind girl in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village”, but more recently she has spent her time in Vancouver filming the third saga of Twilight Bryce was soooo wonderful to work with, Charlotte who styled and Dan who did Hair and make up were also really great!

Photoshoots > Sessions/Outtakes > Michelle Ford

Candids in 2009 > Enters the Pix11 Morning News – December 22nd

GORE VIDAL once remarked that if Tennessee Williams had nothing better to do, he would rewrite something he had already published. Almost until the day he died, in February 1983, Williams kept working, and not just on plays. He also turned out poems, novels, short stories, screenplays. The Williams archive is so vast that much of it is still uncataloged, and there are also works that are hiding in plain sight. “The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond,” a script he wrote in 1957, when he was at the peak of his fame and powers, was collected in an anthology of his screenplays in the mid-’80s but remained unproduced until recently, when Jodie Markell, who had never directed a feature before, exhumed it.

Read the entire NY Times article by clicking here.

Actress Bryce Dallas Howard never imagined that she would be cast as the lead in a new Tennessee Williams screenplay, but that’s what is happening now. as she’s starring in the famed writer’s long-lost The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond. Originally penned for director Elia Kazan after the two had worked on “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Pretty Baby, the script got lost in the shuffle and never was produced. Enter young film student, Jodie Markell, an actress-turned-director making her feature-length directing debut with the Williams screenplay.

“For Fisher Willow, Bryce Dallas Howard was always my first and only choice,” the filmmaker says of casting the plum role of a Tennessee Williams heroine. “I believe she is the greatest actress of her generation. When we initially approached her, she was not taking any jobs due to her pregnancy. So we did the only thing we could do: We waited until she was ready. I’ve never seen an actress her age with so much presence, so grounded in reality. She’s just so hungry for the truth.”

For Howard, daughter of actor/director Ron Howard, being cast as the feisty and determined Fisher Willow is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “To be the first actor to play a new Tennessee Williams character is literally the opportunity of a lifetime. There are only a handful of women who have done that in the history of theater and cinema. He’s one of our most cherished playwrights. That alone totally sold me on the movie.”

Raised outside of Hollywood in Greenwich, Connecticut, the 28-year-old actress didn’t have dreams of acting, but once she was bitten by the acting bug, she opted to study her craft at NYU before being cast in a leading role in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004), followed by his Lady in the Water (2006). Others roles include Manderlay for filmmaker Lars von Trier, as well as Spider-Man 3 for Sam Raimi. This summer Howard will join the Twilight phenomenon in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

An actress/wife/mother, Howard is now adding producer to her resume as she teams up with her dad and his Imagine company on the new and still untitled Gus Van Sant film, currently shooting in Portland. The New Year is indeed looking bright for this star on the rise.

Click here for the interview!

The movie “tells the story of Fisher Willow (Howard), the disliked 1920s Memphis débutante daughter of a plantation owner with a distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her. After returning from studies overseas, Fisher falls in love with Jimmy, the down-and-out son of an alcoholic father and an insane mother who works at a store on her family’s plantation. She tries to pass him off as an upper-class suitor to appease the spinster aunt who controls her family’s fortune, but when she loses a diamond, it places their tenuous relationship in further jeopardy,” according to IMDB.

Howard is a Los Angeles native. Fans will remember her from her roles as Gwen Stacy in Spiderman 3, Kate Connor in Terminator Salvation and Story in Lady In The Water. You can catch her in her next film as Victoria in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond hits theaters on December 30.

The following is another video of Bryce on the View but backstage. She discusses her holiday plans and mentions her son.

I haven’t been able to find any videos but Bryce recently stopped by the ABC studios to visit the crew at Good Morning America. Here are candids of her appearance outside their studios.

Bryce visit the ladies on the view where she talks about The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond and her pregnancy. Some things we didn’t know about Bryce is discussed, watch below:

Then the exit interview of Bryce backstage, picks up where the interview for the show left off:

Several more pictures have been added to the gallery from the Variety Screening for “The Loss of the Teardrop Diamond.”