United Kingdom, Feb. 9 -- Ron Howard refused to allow his daughter Bryce Dallas Howard to become a child star.

The 70-year-old director - who has been married to Cheryl Alley since 1975 - recalled that Bryce, 43, had hopes of breaking into showbiz when she was a child but he always insisted that she focused on her education instead before she followed in his footsteps.

Speaking as part of a panel at MegaCon in Orlando Florida, he explained: "She would ask about [acting], and my wife Cheryl and I would say, 'No, we can't let you be a child actor.

"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 ...