Hollywood heavyweight Ron Howard says JD Vance seems to have changed since authoring a memoir that turned into an Oscar nominated film.
The “Hillbilly Elegy” director admitted to being in shock and awe about the politician who’s become a MAGA-minded lightning rod since being tapped in July as Donald Trump’s Republican running mate.
Vance, who wrote the best-selling book about his impoverished upbringing in the Appalachian mountains, was referred to as a “polarizing, volatile conservative” during Howard’s appearance at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
The former “Happy Days” star-turned-filmmaker explained to Deadline that he and the future Ohio senator “didn’t talk a lot of politics when we were making the movie because I was interested in his upbringing and that survival tale. That’s what we mostly focused on.”
“However, based on the conversations that we had during that time, I just have to say I’m very surprised and disappointed by much of the rhetoric that I’m reading and hearing,” Howard, 70, continued. “People do change, and I assume that’s the case. Well, it’s on record.”
“When we spoke around the time that I knew him, he was not involved in politics or claimed to be particularly interested,” Howard noted, adding: “So that was then.”
In 2017, the multiple Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe winner — whose credits include “Cocoon,” “Apollo 13” and “A Beautiful Mind” — snapped up the rights to Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”
The harrowing book, which has returned to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers list since the Republican National Convention, was adapted into a 2020 Netflix film starring Glen Close and Amy Adams.
