Veteran Hollywood actor and father of director Ron Howard

Born: November 17, 1928;

Died: November 25, 2017

RANCE Howard, who has died aged 89, was a veteran Hollywood actor and the father of the movie director Ron Howard. His acting career spanned more than 60 years and included several films made by his son.

He was born Harold Engle Beckenholdt in Duncan, Oklahoma, the son of a farmer and changed his name when he became an actor. He began his career in the late 1940s and went on to play more than 250 roles - one of his most famous was as Dr McIvers in the long-running 1970s drama series The Waltons.

In all, Howard's acting career spanned more than five decades and enjoyed a late flowering when his son, by then a hugely successful director, began casting his father in his movies. Howard appeared in several of his son's films, including Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Splash, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Parenthood and Grand Theft Auto, which father and son wrote together; the 1977 film was also Ron Howard's directorial debut.

Rance Howard's other film credits include Chinatown and the 2013 drama Nebraska. On television, he appeared in many series including Seinfeld, Murder She Wrote, NCIS: Los Angeles, Grey's Anatomy and the popular sit-com set in the 1950s Happy Days, which also starred his son.

Rance Howard had been married to the late Jean Speegle Howard, having met as teenagers doing a touring children's production in Oklahoma of classic fairy tales.

They married on the tour dressed in their costumes, with the bride dressed as Snow White and the groom as a huntsman.

Ron Howard's daughter, the actress Bryce Dallas Howard, paid tribute to her grandfather by sharing Henry Van Dyke's poem Gone From My Sight along with the message: "My grandfather, the patriarch of our family's favourite poem, he could recite it from heart. I think I'll do the same now."

The Van Dyke poem about death ends: "Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There, she is gone," there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, 'Here she comes!' And that is dying."

Ron Howard wrote, on behalf of himself and his brother Clint: "Clint and I have been blessed to be Rance Howard's sons.

"Today he passed at 89. He stood especially tall for his ability to balance ambition with great personal integrity.

"A depression-era farm boy, his passion for acting changed the course of our family history."

Rance Howard is survived by Ron, his other son actor Clint Howard, and grandchildren Bryce Dallas Howard and Paige Howard.