Her otherworldly good looks have made Bryce Dallas Howard easy to cast in M Night Shyamalan's spook shows. But this young member of a Hollywood dynasty is looking forward to challenging roles in Shakespeare and Spider-Man 3, she tells Donald Clarke

BRYCE Dallas Howard, whose tri-partite name alone suggests a slightly hoity-toity majesty, is wearing the sort of elaborately frilly blouse Bette Davis used to don before tragically spurning some inadequate suitor. Her red hair is at a polite shoulder length and she speaks with old-fashioned New England vowels. On screen she has been even more intimidatingly austere than the image this superficial description throws up. Howard, now 25, made her proper screen debut as the strange blind girl in M Night Shyamalan's impressively spooky The Village. In Lars von Trier's Manderlay, taking over the role originated by Nicole Kidman for the same director's Dogville, she acted the severe Australian into a cocked hat. And now, she turns up as a near-mute water nymph in Shyamalan's gorgeous, incomprehensible, fascinating, barmy Lady in the Water.

"Yeah, that was a challenge," Howard says. "That was unexpected, because I tend to be very verbose in my communication. I tend to think that the more words I use in my conversation the better I will communicate. And I now know that is not quite true."

You will have read enough celebrity interviews to know that I am about to tell you that Bryce Dallas Howard is not as you might expect. She, it transpires, is witty, friendly and frequently giggly. But there is certainly something regal about her. We should, perhaps, not be surprised. As the daughter of Ron Howard - erstwhile star of Happy Days and American Graffiti and director of Parenthood, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and (ahem!) The Da Vinci Code - BDH is, insofar as such a thing exists, Hollywood royalty.

"Growing up in that background, you really do get to see the downside to the business," she says. "It can be like an emotional rollercoaster and then one day it's all gone. I witnessed that firsthand."

Really? There were surely a great deal more ups than downs in her father's career.

"Oh, yes. But I mean I noticed these things hanging out on my dad's sets. Every now and then I would say: 'Where is such-and-such a guy? He was lovely?' And my dad would say: 'Oh, you know, he doesn't get much work anymore.' That teaches you not to take anything for granted in the business."

Ron and Cheryl Howard, eschewing the temptations of Hollywood, raised their four children among the sylvan glades of Connecticut. Bryce didn't see an episode of Happy Days until she was 20; far from being shunted before casting agents, she was encouraged to write, draw and otherwise create. Ron, nonetheless, did find small roles for her in Parenthood and Apollo 13. It is, then, safe to assume he wasn't opposed to the idea of her treading the boards.

"Oh, no. They were happy," she agrees. "I was talking about this to a friend the other day. I was thinking: when I have kids would I be happy if they went into the business? And I think I would just be happy if they were doing something they loved. I know my parents felt the same way."

Bryce was, however, understandably concerned that cynics would attribute any professional triumph to her family connections. Accordingly, when she went to New York University to study drama, she decided to go by the name of Bryce Dallas. (She was, apparently, conceived in Dallas, hence that middle name.) Bryce has previously joked that this made her sound a little too much like a porn star, but she had more profound reasons for reverting to her full sobriquet.

"I was Bryce Dallas when I first started auditioning. I was Bryce Dallas when I got my first part," she says. "Then I became very embarrassed at my lack of confidence at why I got cast. I suddenly felt a degree of disgrace at leaving behind my family name. I am proud of my family and all they've done. But also I want to acknowledge the advantages that they afforded me. It really is a lot easier being in this business if your parents understand what you are going though."

Few actors have had quite as spectacular a first break as that enjoyed by Bryce Dallas Howard. In 2003 she was appearing in a production of As You Like It in New York when M Night Shyamalan, director of the classic The Sixth Sense, dropped in. He met her for lunch and cast her in The Village without even bothering to schedule an audition.

"I remember walking home and calling my husband - he was my boyfriend then - and shouting: 'He just offered me the lead in his movie and I am holding the script in my hand.' And then he started crying too." Did Shyamalan ever explain why he felt inclined to take such a gamble on her?

"I have no idea. I really have no clue whatsoever," she laughs. "What's interesting is that initially I wasn't reviewed well at all in the play. Weirdly, I gained a lot of confidence from that. I was like: 'Oh well, the worst has happened. The New York Times hated me. I feel kind of free now.' And then I got this part."

The Village, though a fine mood piece, got decidedly mixed reviews. Howard's eerie, otherworldly performance was, however, showered with praise from all quarters. The notices for Manderlay (in which, like Kidman before her, she was shuffled about a set chalked on a wooden floor) also singled her out for particular commendation. Sadly, she somehow managed to avoid encountering any of Lars von Trier's famous eccentricities. "Yeah, I would always miss them. I'd come back on set and somebody would say: 'Lars just took off his pants.'"

It looks as if a new act of Howard's life is set to begin. Earlier this summer she wed Seth Gabel, also an actor, and within the next 12 months we will see her in two roles where she finally gets to escape from the gloom into which directors have hitherto cast her.

Next May, Bryce appears in the role of Gwen Stacy, one of Peter Parker's best-remembered girlfriends, in the indecently promising Spider-Man 3. For disciples of the comic, Stacy occupies a position roughly (and sacrilegiously) equivalent to that taken by the Madonna in Catholic theology. There are many reasons for this, but the foremost can be stated baldly: she dies.

I'm sure Bryce can't tell us if her Gwen will meet the same fate, and I, of course, wouldn't pass on the information even if she did. "Oh no! I really can't say," she exclaims in mock outrage. "It's interesting with Gwen. In the comic book she was Spider-Man's first love and in the first film they switched it around and made Mary-Jane his first love and gave her some of the Gwen Stacy story arc. It's been a wonderful challenge sorting that out."

Before that, with beautiful symmetry, she will return to the role of Rosalind for Kenneth Branagh's film of As You Like It. At the mention of this she pricks up and becomes almost girly.

"I saw it with some friends recently and they were like: 'Oh finally a film in which we can see the real you. At last a film in which we get to see you smile!'"