Bryce Dallas Howard feels extremely protective of her family, and for good reason.
The “Jurassic Park” star said in an interview with People magazine on Friday that she “withdrew” after having her oldest son, now 17, because of events in her childhood.
“I also grew up in a situation where there were some real security [concerns] and that’s scary as a parent,” she said. Dallas Howard is the daughter of the famous “Happy Days” actor and director Ron Howard.
“Growing up, we had some security issues. It was super scary,” she told the outlet. “And we had to leave our house, and there were, you know, incidents that were just totally, totally terrifying.”
Dallas Howard and her father opened up more about the traumatic experience in a candid interview with Graham Bensinger last year.
“I think the scariest part for me was that I, because I was the oldest child, I was aware something was going on,” she said. “And it was like, ‘Why can’t I call my friends?’ And, you know, they don’t want to explain to me because [our] frickin’ phones are tapped, trying to find where we are?”
The director explained that the family found out about the phone tapping from police, and the FBI later became involved.
“There were vehicles observed in our area that very well fit the description of some of the people they thought might be involved,” he said of the threats. “We just picked up the family and left.”
Howard explained that it wasn’t clear “what the criminal objectives were, but it was not good.”
He said, “It was very traumatic, but thank god ― no crimes were committed. But just the pressure of anticipating that possibility, I found fascinating.”
Howard previously told the Daily Mail that he found the entire experience “profoundly unsettling and disturbing.”
Though the people targeting his family eventually “left the state” and “no arrests were made,” he used the experience to direct the 1996 movie “Ransom,” which is about a family that faces a kidnapping threat.
“I was able to put many of the emotions and feelings I had into the movie,” he said in the 2019 interview. “It made it very personal. There was a child in jeopardy, and emotionally, I had a very difficult time directing those scenes.”