Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom star Bryce Dallas Howard told HFPA journalist Scott Orlin why her new adventure movie is relevant today. “We’re on Isla Nublar, and the park is no longer operational. It’s been completely abandoned by human beings and there’s only dinosaurs left there. And there’s a volcano that is on the verge of an eruption, and it will be an extinction level event, it will wipe out the dinosaurs. Claire is campaigning, working very, very hard to figure out a way to get these animals off the island so that they do not go extinct.”

In this conversation she also settles an urban myth that every one of her family’s middle names is a location where they were conceived. “That’s true. My dad was shooting a TV film called Skyward with Bette Davis at the time in Dallas.”

Her parents, director Ron Howard and writer Cheryl Howard, were high school sweethearts and they are still together. Their oldest daughter traveled with them everywhere. “I was always on sets. I remember being on the set of Cocoon, I remember being on the set of Splash, these were my earliest memories.”

But she wasn’t allowed to be in the background as an extra until she was seven. “Before that I was sitting in his chair, on his shoulders, hanging out nonstop on set. It was really an incredible experience for me getting to feel that level of comfort.”

Her first leading role was in M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological thriller The Village. “He saw me at the Public Theatre’s play As You Like It and a few weeks later offered me a lead in his next movie.”

She also tells what it was like working with realistic looking dinosaurs; why the shoes budget was way more expensive than in the first Jurassic World movie; why she loves her co-star Chris Pratt; why her mom was called Charlie for a while; when her interest in basketball flipped to acting; when she met Natalie Portman for the first time; how was her childhood in Connecticut; what kind of rules she has created for herself; why she thinks she is not cool; how was the experience of directing her first short Orchids during her first pregnancy; why she feels strange when people recognize her and much more.

Listen to the conversation here or, for immediate access to all of our podcasts, subscribe to HFPA in Conversation on iTunes.