Ron Howard: I was very fortunate because as a child, I was exposed to something, the entertainment business, and taught about it in a really solid way.  My dad is a very good natural teacher. He really gave me the fundamentals. A lot of children are put in that situation, and they’re just a little bit more than trained animals. They look cute, and people want to get a certain reaction out of them, so they goad them, or they bribe them, but the children aren’t really learning how to act. So I had that going for me. The environment, particularly on The Andy Griffith Show, was really wonderful and very inclusive. And if there’s any reason that I like reaching out and talking to people about what I do, it’s because that was very much the environment on The Andy Griffith Show. The actors were really allowed to participate, to contribute. And even as a kid — I’m talking about six, seven, eight years old — I was allowed to raise my hand and offer up a point of view about a scene, or changing a line of dialogue, or making something a little bit more natural. I was allowed to participate. And, you know, imagine the sort of self-esteem that goes along with being accepted by a bunch of adults. It was extraordinary.