Ron Howard Reveals Wife Cheryl Has Surprising Cameo in His Thriller “Eden”, and It Involves a Mustache (Exclusive)
- - Ron Howard Reveals Wife Cheryl Has Surprising Cameo in His Thriller “Eden”, and It Involves a Mustache (Exclusive)
Liz McNeilAugust 26, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Ron Howard reveals his wife Cheryl has a surprise cameo in his new film Eden involving a mustache and wig
After over five decades of directing, Howard shares details on some of her more surprising appearances, including being a nun in 1995's Apollo 13
Howard's friend Henry Winkler shares an early memory of Cheryl catering for the film crew, even though she had a very small oven
Ron Howard, an Oscar-winning director for over five decades, has worked with nearly everyone in Hollywood, from Jimmy Stewart and Bette Davis to Tom Cruise — and Cheryl Howard.
If you look closely at Howard’s genre-hopping films over the years, you will likely find a cameo by his wife of 50 years, Cheryl, including his latest, Eden, a true-life 1930s survival thriller about a small European colony on a remote island in the Galapagos.
"It's kind of like Where's Waldo?” Howard, 71, tells PEOPLE. “You have to really know what you're looking for.”
As Howard explains, “Cheryl's either played a small part with a line or two or just been an extra in everything I've done since we met, going back to my Super 8 filmmaking days. Obviously not the documentaries, but anything scripted."
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty
Cheryl and Ron Howard on Dec. 10, 2015
At times, he’s had to get creative, as he did with Eden, which stars Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, Vanessa Kirby and Ana de Armas. This time, he reveals, Cheryl appears in a scene where a yacht briefly stops and visits the few people who are living on the isolated island of Floreana.
“I had a problem with Eden because they're on a desert island,” says Howard. “We only had one time when a yacht visits, and historically it was an all-male crew that came and visited. So I told Cheryl she was going to have to be a guy, and we put a little mustache on her and she got a little wig, and she was somewhat a feminine food server at a banquet that they were having there on the beach."
He jokes, "No close-ups — the makeup was good, but not that good!"
Celeste Sloman
After all this time, she’s never been typecast.
Says Howard, “She was a bartender in The Paper (1994). John Candy dropped coins and looked up her skirt in Splash (1984). She was a nun watching the launch in Apollo 13 (1995). Oh my gosh. She was a peasant woman tackled by Nockmaar villains in Willow (1998). She was a nurse in Hillbilly Elegy (2020), and she was a teacher in A Beautiful Mind (2001)."
“She shows up,” says Howard. “If you know what you're looking for, you can find her."
His longtime friend and former Happy Days costar Henry Winkler remembers Cheryl playing a different role in the early days.
According to Winkler, 79, “When he would do his earlier films or Roger Corman films (Howard's directorial debut was Grand Theft Auto in 1977, produced by Corman) everybody in his family participated, and Cheryl was the caterer. Their stove was too small for the size of the roast beef they needed to feed the whole crew. So she put in the roast beef, cooked it up in the space they had and then turned it around and cooked the rest.”
“That's ingenuity," says Winkler. "That's a woman to marry.”
Eden is in theaters now.For more on Ron Howard and his legendary life and films, pick up a copy of this week’s PEOPLE.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
