Ron Howard is still sitting with real guilt over the years his younger brother, Clint Howard, spent lost to addiction.
“It was terrifying, and I wasn’t sure Clint was going to make it out. I don’t think mom and dad were sure he was going to make it out,” the Oscar-winning director recalled, per PEOPLE.
The comments trace back to 2023, when Ron, now 72, and Clint, now 67, sat down together for In Depth with Graham Bensinger, the interview show hosted by journalist Graham Bensinger. Across that conversation, the brothers walked through the period Clint spent battling drug and alcohol addiction, and the toll it took on their close-knit family.
“I had been really strictly controlled as a kid,” Ron said, describing how he pushed their parents, actor Rance Howard and Jean “Cheryl” Howard, to loosen up on Clint. “So I pushed mom and dad to give him more freedom and more flexibility. And even when Clint was starting to smoke pot and things like that…I wasn’t using any drugs, but I had really good friends who were and were highly functional and socially responsible about it. And I just said, ‘You know, this is not, it’s not a nightmare. This is changing times, relax.’”
Ron said he became “a voice kind of telling them to back off as parents” at a point when their parents might have stepped in. “And so those are regrets that I have,” he admitted.
The situation didn’t stay contained to a few too many joints. Clint grew “delusional and having kind of episodes that were drug-related,” Ron said, describing “brushes with the law” and stretches where his brother came close to homelessness.
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Rehab hadn’t worked, not the first time or the second. What finally turned things around, Ron said, was their father’s brand of “tough love” once Clint, then 30, decided for himself that he wanted out.
“Dad really helped him turn that corner, once Clint decided,” Ron said. “He found ways to sort of give him just enough money to live on and just enough space to feel autonomous, but with a lot of supervision.”
Clint sees the whole episode differently than his brother does, and he didn’t hold back when asked about Ron’s guilt.
“I don’t know…What’s a big brother going to do? I mean, I love Ron. And I knew what he was thinking,” Clint said, recalling a blunt conversation Ron once had with him: “It’s one thing when you use drugs, but it’s another thing when drugs start using you.”
Clint added that his brother’s approach worked precisely because it wasn’t heavy-handed. “If he would have played it differently, I may have fully rejected it,” he said. “Ron and I were always really close.”
These days, the brothers’ bond shows up on-screen more than in crisis. Ron told PEOPLE in April 2025 that casting Clint never carries the weight family favors usually do.
“He’s great to work with. He has just seen it all, done it all,” Ron said. “Every time I have had a chance to cast him in something meaningful, I never forced him in there. But every time I can cast Clint, I know that’s one character I won’t have to worry about.”
Clint has kept working steadily too, most recently earning a Daytime Emmy nomination for his guest run as Tom Starr on THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, a role he’s called “exhilarating”.
Movieguide® has covered plenty of Hollywood families who trade on the industry’s more glamorous instincts. The Howards are a rarer thing: a father who answered his son’s addiction with tough love instead of walking away, and two brothers still working out, decades later, exactly how much blame belongs to whom — proof that grace and accountability can sit at the same family table.
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