At the beginning of my interview with Bryce Dallas Howard she does something I’ve never experienced before in a celebrity sit-down. Curled up on a coach in Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hote,l the four-and-a-half month pregnant star of The Help does something really un-celebrity-like-she offers to hold the microphone I’m using to record our chat.

It’s a small thing, but it goes a long way to creating a portrait of the down-to-earth Golden Globe nominee, who is best known for roles in blockbusters like Spider-Man 3, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Terminator Salvation.

Surrounded by celebrity from birth-her father is TV icon Ron Howard-she has observed stardom up close and has strong opinions about fame-her own and those around her.

“It’s weird that we expect celebrities to behave like they’re so entitled,” she says. “I think it’s because a lot of celebrities do, and that’s just absurd.”

This is coming from someone whose godfather is Henry Winkler, who once had Tom Cruise as a babysitter and first acted at age seven as an extra in one of her dad’s movies.

“I’ve always been kind of fascinated by that subject because while I have closely observed celebrity I have always felt apart from it because I was raised outside of Hollywood,” she says. “I’ve always had an interesting relationship with the idea of what a celebrity is.

“Recently, because of reality television, the notion of celebrity and what people are famous for is changing,” she adds.

I mention stars that parlay sex tapes into a showbiz career and she nods.

“I think unfortunately that is defining our time. I’ve never actually had this thought before, but I think it would be interesting to look back in history and see who the most iconic individuals of that time period were and then look at now, and perhaps be a little bit horrified.”

When I ask if fame is important to her personally she is quick to answer.

“No,” she says emphatically. “Not at all. One of the things I feel most grateful for is that I don’t live the life of a famous person. I could not imagine living a life with paparazzi around me, when you feel like your privacy is being intruded. That would be really terrifying to me.”