On the small screen, Howard has offered strong portrayals of criminals like a sadistic rapist in "Hands of a Stranger" (NBC, 1987) and the pedophile who kidnaps a young boy and holds him for seven years in the miniseries "I Know My First Name Is Steven" (NBC, 1989). He won a CableACE Award for his supporting turn in the HBO film "Somebody Has to Shoot the Picture" (1990). More recently, he was the bewildered husband of Sissy Spacek in Showtime's "Beyond the Call" (1996) and the Israeli Mossad agent who became "The Man Who Captured Eichmann" (TNT, 1996). Howard earned widespread critical praise for his role as a convict who befriends a pregnant woman (Jeanne Tripplehorn) in "William Faulkner's Old Man" (CBS, 1997).
Howard married his "Wilder Napalm" co-star Debra Winger in 1996.