Clint Howard is still working, still getting noticed and still tied to the family name that helped make him familiar to American TV audiences. The 67-year-old actor, who played Leon on The Andy Griffith Show when he was two years old, recently saw his latest movie, The Wolf and the Lamb, released on April 24 and picked up a 2025 Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series.
Howard, the younger brother of Ron Howard, posted that he is blessed to have his wife and daughter in his life. In his own words, he said he is “so blessed to have two beautiful women in my life,” calling Kat Cruz his “caring, loving wife” and Raffie his “extremely talented, blossoming daughter.”
That personal note lands alongside a career that has never really stopped moving. Ron Howard began his showbiz journey as Opie on The Andy Griffith Show and later became known to a generation of viewers as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. Clint Howard’s own path ran through childhood guest spots on The Fugitive and The Patty Duke Show, voice work in The Jungle Book and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and later films that included his brother’s Splash and Apollo 13. He also played Tom Starr on The Bold and the Beautiful in 2024, a reminder that his work has stretched across decades and mediums.
The family timeline is tangled with the business. Howard was born on April 20, 1959, married Ann Marie Lynch from 1988 to 1989, and later spent 22 years with Melanie Sorich before that marriage ended in 2017. He married Kat Cruz in July 2020, and the couple share a daughter named Raffie. His latest public comment about them was simple: Kat and Raffie are the best.
What makes the moment matter is not just nostalgia for andy griffith, but the fact that Howard’s career has stayed active well into his late 60s. IMDb says he has four more films in the works, which means the latest Emmy nod and new release are not a sentimental coda. They are part of a working actor’s present-tense life, one that still has credits coming and family close at hand.
