Known for iconic films like A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13 and Splash, Academy Award-winning director, producer and screenwriter ron Howard shared his creative philosophies and career insights with the Sarasota community at the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall Lecture Series this past January. Before taking the stage at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall for the main event, Howard sat down to take a few questions in a one-on-one interview with SRQ Magazine, offering a more intimate glimpse into the experiences and lessons that have shaped his extraordinary journey in Hollywood.

As a producer, you hire directors and you're well known as a director yourself. Is a director someone who has an excellent instinct for what makes the humanity of an individual work Or do you think it's more important that a director knows what will make an audience react?

RON HOWARD: It's both. And I think what you look for in a director–and my partner at Imagine, Brian Grazer, is better at this than I am–he makes his living trying to put together the right combination of artists and ideas. I think that's what you look for. Technical expertise, experience, these things have value, but these aren't mechanical jobs. They're artistic jobs and they're also about leadership. So, I think what we look for at Imagine is a person who seems to have an innate connection with the material. And then has proven through previous work to also have the talent to be able to get those ideas, whether they're intellectual or emotional (and emotional is usually more important than intellectual) and, above all, cinematic ideas onto the screen. Then you also try to understand: Are they the type? What kind of leader are they going to be? Are they the type of individual that brings out the best in others? These are traits that I've tried to develop for myself as well as a filmmaker over the years, but it's also what we look for at Imagine.

Your company Imagine has been an incredible passion project for you. The skills that have made you a celebrated director—How have those translated and how have they related to running a production company?

RON HOWARD: Well, the secret sauce behind Imagine all these years has really been this alliance between Brian Grazer and myself. And we do, I think, serve each other well. We're friends, but we're different, and we look for different things. So, I think it's the combined creative energies, curiosity, ambition and taste of the two of us together that created a culture that's Imagine. Now, we have executives, we have longtime collaborators and we've been able to build upon that and broaden it into other areas like branded content and documentaries in recent years. And, of course, we're continuing to do movies and television. But it was all born with a couple of projects that we did together. But even before that, it's who we are as individuals and the fact that there's just good chemistry there and we've been able to build a culture around that.

The way you talk about collaborating with other creative people seems to be filled with positivity. The Hollywood industry is famous or infamous for being a place with a lot of negative and opportunistic energy. How have you held on to your positivity and succeeded so well in a world that has this reputation?

RON HOWARD: First of all, I truly love it. I could say the same thing for Brian—we have that in common. We love storytelling. We love the fellow artists who have dedicated their lives to getting stories told in ways that will connect with an audience. But it's also in being pragmatic, not idealistic and understanding of the pressures around this. So there's a duality there. Yeah, it's a huge business. It's driven by the bottom line in a lot of ways—it has to be for those who are investing. Then for those who just want to tell a great story, it's all about that passion. And so, there's an eternal friction. And yet everybody wants the same thing—which is a project which is going to cut through, a project which is going to mean something to people which will endure. So, I think the optimism, in my mind, is that whatever anyone's abject priority might be, it all ultimately serves this idea of telling stories that will resonate with people. And so, if you're just aware of what all the dynamics are, you can be honest about it and open about it. You can understand it without actually becoming cynical, because it's just part of the process—it's part of the process of getting there.