Happy days in Hollywood for director Ron Howard

Ron Howard says he loves the work ethic of Aussie actors as he prepares to release his latest historical epic with Chris Hemsworth.

The Academy Award-winning director has worked with some of our biggest stars and received his first Oscar for Russell Crowe's A Beautiful Mind.

"You got Russell Crowe, Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman…every one of them, unbelievable work ethic you know.

"They're incredibly talented, won't give up ever and it makes it kind of fun while it's all happening, so you tell me. I've never been able to figure it out."

"What is it? What's in the water? What's the deal?"

Ron Howard also directed Russell Crowe in the acclaimed Cinderella Man and Hemsworth in Rush.

"There is something that is very, very direct, accessible, there's a charisma and there's something unpretentious about them."

Howard's new film In the Heart of The Sea was a passion project for Hemsworth and Howard.

He said it has become increasingly difficult to get a high-budget epic made.

"Chris Hemsworth brought it to me. We had such a great experience working together on Rush you know, I so enjoyed directing him and was pleased that Rush was showing him off in a different, more complex light."

"There’s just so much competition that the choices that audiences are making are pushing studios to sort of say the safest bet in the world is a Marvel movie or a Pixar movie or Star wars.

"Everything else is very high risk."

In the Heart of the Sea recreates the historic tale of Moby Dick and stars Hemsworth as the First Mate of a whaling ship intent on bringing down the giant beast after it leaves them lost at sea.

Howard begun his career as a child star of The Andy Griffiths Show and a teen on Happy Days, but his passion was always behind the camera.

"The first paying job came when I was four and that was a movie called The Journey and we shot it in Vienna, Austria and it’s the reason that I actually got into it because my parents did notice that I was picking up the dialogue."

"I got the part and my parents went well we didn’t really think that we wanted a child actor."

"They just figured 'Hey it’s a one time thing, we still put the money in a college account for him,' but I remember absolutely loving it, I mean I loved the magic of it.

He wrote and directed his first feature, Grand Theft Auto while still the star of Happy Days.

But in 1980 he finally left the Happy Days set and hit his stride as a driector. His most notable films include the science-fiction/fantasy film Cocoon (1985), iconic Apollo 13 (1995), A Beautiful Mind (2001) which earned him the Academy Award for Best Director.

The Da Vinci Code (2006) with Tom Hanks cemented his position as blockbuster-maker.

"I realised early on that movies were an opportunity to go on these life adventures and I am not a very adventurous person and but you know suddenly I would find myself, whether it was Splash or Cocoon, scuba diving, filming underwater at night you know on drop offs and or up in helicopters."

Find out more about Ron Howard's new movie In the Heart of the Sea, visit: www.intheheartoftheseamovie.com.au