Personal Life
On June 17, 2006, Howard married fellow actor Seth Gabel, with whom she now lives in Hollywood, California. The two met at New York University and dated for five years. She had only one previous boyfriend and claims to have pursued Gabel vigorously after first meeting him. They had planned to start a family together in their 30s. However, seven days after their wedding, she learned that she was expecting their first child. Howard gave birth to their child, a son named Theodore Norman Howard-Gabel, nicknamed Theo, on February 16, 2007. Theo's godfather is actor Josh Gad. Howard later admitted to suffering from post-partum depression. Howard had difficulty breast-feeding, which she found to be more painful than experiencing natural child birth and would often cry in the shower. Rather than refer to her son by his name, she would call him "it". Feeling overwhelmed and unable to make decisions, Howard also felt not only disconnected from her husband and baby, but herself as well. With the combination of homeopathic treatments and sessions with a physician and a therapist, she overcame the depression, which lasted for about 18 months. Howard said of the depression in 2010,
"Do I wish I had never endured post-partum depression? Absolutely. But to deny the experience is to deny who I am. I still mourn the loss of what could have been, but I also feel deep gratitude for those who stood by me, for the lesson that we must never be afraid to ask for help, and for the feeling of summer that still remains."
Howard gave birth to the couple's second child, daughter Beatrice Jean Howard-Gabel, on January 19, 2012.
Howard became a devoted vegan when Joaquin Phoenix, a co-star in The Village, showed her a documentary on animal cruelty called Earthlings. However, in August 2006, Howard announced that she had switched her diet from vegan to vegetarian in order to help boost her amino acid levels in preparation for her pregnancy. Due to a rare medical condition she developed after her pregnancy, she now eats meat. She is also slightly superstitious.
During her senior year of high school, Howard learned of and fell in love with existentialism. "I was like, 'This is it! This is my religion.' I had never felt a connection to any sort of spirituality before that. It was very basic - you're responsible for the choices that you make - but it was mind-blowing at the time." Her hobby is writing and she is good friends with Kirsten Dunst, Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal. Howard has said that she gets "freaked out" by "the Hollywood scene" and has never had a sip of alcohol in her entire life. She credits seeing the negative effects of alcoholism in her family as the reason behind the decision. "When I was in high school, I would never go to parties because I would be embarrassed to say no. Consequently, I had almost no social group," Howard recalled.
Read more about this topic: Bryce Dallas Howard
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