Ron Howard honors his deceased mother Jean on his 98th birthday

Ron Howard Is to honor his mother, Jean Spegle Howard, on what would have been her 98 birthday.

On Saturday, February 1, Ron, 70, shared an undated Throwback photo to Instagram It showed that Jean painted an apartment in the hall, which was part of a short film he did as a teenager. The Oscar Award The winner then reflected on his mother’s impact on his career. “A favorite picture of our deceased mother, actress Jean Spegle Howard. She would have been 98 today and I love this photo because it says so much about her can-do spirit and total support from her loved ones,” he wrote.

“Here she restores to the original color a borrowed APT Hall that she had hours before painted to help me for a scene in a 16 mm short film that I did as a teenager,” Ron noted in the caption. “Whether it acted in a movie, behind the scenes in a waiver of Equity, the PTA show or one of my shorts, she was all in, made her part to bring the production to life. She leads with examples and we owe her So much.

Jean, who died 73 years 2000, was credited with 62 roles on the screen between 1956 and her death. A Los Angeles Times Death right noted that she set her own career to raise Ron and his younger brother, Klint65, with his husband, Rance. When Jean resumed to act full-time in the mid-1980s, she found character roles in movies, such as HullThe Matilda and even part of Rons 1995 Docudrama, Apollo 13.

Ron spoke to his relationship with Jean – and regrets that he did not make his appreciation for her clear until late in life – during a 2023 look in the interview series In depth with Graham Besinger.

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“It wasn’t until later when I started to have children myself and I began to see her deal with even more serious illness and I could see what warrior she was,” Ron said at that time after noting that Jean struggled with her health underneath Adult life. “I would have these conversations with my dad where I would start to realize how deeply she had affected her life and therefore our lives and her belief in how a career in this business could be and her excitement around it.”

“I have so few regrets in my life and to feel that you somehow did not communicate to your mother everything she meant – it struck me,” he added. “It hits me hard.”

Ron’s father, Rance, died 89 in 2017. Ron wrote in a death for his father who shared with people at the time saying that he “devoted himself to taking care of” Jean before her death from complications of heart disease.