DESPITE BEING LABELED AS UNINTELLIGENT BY HIS PARENTS, HE BECAME ADORED BY MILLIONS AS HE MATURED.
Henry Winkler is famous for playing Fonzie on Happy Days. Fonzie was really cool in the 1970s.
Henry Winkler was born on October 30, 1945, in New York City. He always knew he wanted to be an actor. He said in an interview with NPR in 2019, “I knew that I wanted to act since I was old enough to reason. I never had a Plan B. I never deviated. I never thought that there was anything else that I could possibly do in this world except to try and be a working actor.”
When Henry Winkler was a kid, he had a hard time with school and learning. This caused problems with his parents. He didn’t know it then, but he had dyslexia, a condition that makes reading and writing difficult. His parents didn’t know about this and thought he was dumb. They even called him names like “Dummo Hund,” which means dumb dog.
Despite struggling in school, Winkler went to college. He got a Bachelor’s degree from Emerson College in 1967 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1970. Even though he faced challenges, he didn’t give up on his dreams.
After a brief time on Broadway in 1972, Winkler started doing commercials. He became really good at it and made a living from it. This allowed him to pursue his passion for acting in plays at night.
When Henry Winkler was on Happy Days, a lot of people loved him. They liked his cool style with his motorcycle and leather jacket. These things became famous because of him.
Even though playing Fonz was a big deal, it was hard for him to find good acting jobs afterward. He struggled for about eight years.
Winkler talked about having dyslexia, which made reading difficult for him. To get through auditions, he had to memorize everything. He used humor to cover up any problems and tried to capture the character’s essence.
After Happy Days, he started working behind the scenes. He made TV shows like MacGyver, So Weird, and Mr. Sunshine. He also acted in movies like Scream and The Waterboy, and on TV shows like The Practice and Arrested Development.
In 2018, Henry Winkler started acting in a show called Barry. He plays a teacher named Gene Cousineau. He works with Bill Hader in the show. But because of the coronavirus, they had to stop filming. They hoped to start again in January. Winkler has been waiting to play Gene Cousineau since December 2018.
Since the early 2000s, Winkler has written about 30 books.
At first, he didn’t think he could write books. But his agent suggested it to him. He told the Hollywood Reporter in 2011 that he didn’t believe he could do it at first.
