Why ‘Supportive’ Ron Howard Is Like a ‘Second Father’ to Eden Star Daniel Brühl (Exclusive) 

Ron Howard lives up to his reputation as one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, according to Daniel Brühl.

The actor, 46, worked with director Howard, 70, on the 2013 film Rush and the new survival drama Eden, the true story of three groups of settlers who travel from Europe to live on the remote island of Floreana in the Galápagos during the Great Depression. 

At the Sept. 7 premiere of the film at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Brühl told PEOPLE the Oscar winner is “the best.”

“He's so supportive. To me, he's not only a director in the classical sense, but he's also a mentor. He's a second father,” added the Inglourious Basterds star, who’s attached to direct the upcoming movie Break about German tennis star Gottfried von Cramm.

“Now that I also want to go into directing, he was always open also to answer any questions that I had concerning directing movies,” Brühl said. “I was thankful for every piece of information because this man has been around for so long, he hasn't lost an inch of his energy and curiosity.”

“If I'm still around, when I reach his age, I want to have 20 percent of his energy,” he continued.

The two men have kept in touch since working on Rush more than a decade ago. In fact, they talked about making Eden not long after they finished making the Formula 1 racing film.

Howard, who visited the Galápagos Islands on a family vacation years prior, learned of the true story while visiting a museum there and was inspired to turn it into a movie.

“The thing that I remembered most was this amazing set of characters who had gone off the grid and were trying to redefine themselves,” he told PEOPLE at TIFF. “And they had these crazy events unfold. And that's what I remembered, and I started reading about it and I started researching it. I literally was typing out an outline on my Blackberry. So that will tell you how long ago that was.”

In the years since, he made other movies like Solo: A Star Wars Story and Hillbilly Elegy, but he couldn’t get the Floreana settlers — who feuded with deadly results — out of his head.

“There was just something about these characters and this circumstance that just fascinated me,” he continued. 

“It was full of surprises, and as time went on, it just felt, in a way, more and more relevant — the dynamics of these characters. And I also thought it would be great acting opportunities," added Howard. "'m always looking for something to direct that can really challenge actors and give them something exciting to do.”

Eden, which does not yet have a release date, also stars Jude Law, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney and Ana de Armas.