HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN
As The Fonz he was TV’s coolest man — he even turned down Travolta’s role in Grease. But fame took a terrible toll on Henry Winkler, as he reveals on his new tour...
Oh to glide through life like The Fonz from Happy Days, knowing you’re the coolest guy on the planet. Henry Winkler, the veteran Hollywood actor who played Arthur Fonzarelli — Fonzie to an entire generation — seems, on the surface, to have been the epitome of cool in real life too. This is a man who once had Bette Davis round for tea. ‘I put out ashtrays but Bette Davis didn’t do ashtrays,’ he says, pretending to flick ash with gay abandon. ‘I wish I’d scooped it up and kept it.’
Fonzie made him a household name for life. He says both Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney came up to him in the street saying, “Hey, Fonz!”
Macca even asked for his number. ‘It was crazy in those days. I genuinely thought he wanted me to call him. I tried him every ten minutes for five hours.’ He never picked up? ‘No. If you know him, would you tell him.’
Henry is heading to Ireland in June with his tour The Fonz And Beyond, in which he’ll share stories from the autobiography he published last year. He knows people will want to hear about Fonzie (he’s spent much of his life trying to escape Happy Days but realises ‘it gave me this life, and I’ll always be grateful’).
But it’s Henry’s wider journey through Hollywood, and life, that will provide much of the material, and it hasn’t been plain sailing. Yet this is a man who knows everyone. He’s godfather to his Happy Days co-star Ron Howard’s actress daughter Bryce. He was working with Harrison Ford when Ford headed off to film a new movie, some futuristic thing. ‘Turned out to be Star Wars.’
He has stories from all the Hollywood parties. ‘The person with the most magnetism was Paul Newman. When he was in the room you didn’t look anywhere else. That was a power like I’d never experienced.’ He was also in the room, with Madonna. ‘She nodded. I nodded.’
He nods now. He’s still The Fonz, despite the white hair.
He’s been called the nicest man in Hollywood. He says he felt so lost and alone on his first film set that he vowed to welcome newbies — like Sylvester Stallone, who, on arriving in Hollywood as a nobody, suffered a car calamity. He called Henry. ‘I went to pick him up. He’s still a good friend. I sold his first script to ABC, then had to get it back when they wanted to replace him as a writer. A year later, the movie came out. It was Rocky.’
There were near-misses in his own career, which has included much-lauded roles in the film
Scream (‘although they refused to put my name on the billing because they thought The Fonz would detract from the horror’), and sitcoms Arrested Development and
Parks And Recreation. Yet he once turned down the role in Grease that a young man called John Travolta took because he worried about being typecast if he wore another leather jacket. He directed Dolly Parton in the 1986 TV movie Smoky
Mountain Christmas. ‘She was so warm and smart.’ And easy to direct? ‘People who are great never have to tell you who they are. It’s the person struggling to be great who has to put on a show.’ Has he encountered a lot of divas? ‘There weren’t many. Burt Reynolds was one.’
Henry was initially the director on Turner And Hooch, starring a young Tom Hanks. It’s rumoured Tom got him fired two weeks into filming. ‘I have nothing to say,’ he says, which says it anyway.
This all suggests a rather fabulous route through life, but the disconnect between outer ‘cool’ and inner torment is something Henry, 78, has spent much of his life trying to come to terms with. The first time he saw a therapist, the insecurities poured out. The fact he thought his parents never loved him, were ashamed of him, thought he was stupid. His crippling anxiety. The terror that Hollywood would chew him up and spit him out.
But there was a horror plot twist. ‘One day my therapist asked me to read a script he’d written,’ he says. ‘I walked out, never to return. It was saddening, enraging.’
He gave up trying to understand himself until he reached a crisis point nine years ago. ‘I was so discombobulated I went searching for this woman, who’s changed my life.’ He means a therapist his friends recommended. He credits her with the fact he is now able to accept that he is not a fake.
His greatest professional achievement was winning a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for playing acting teacher Gene Cousineau in the crime comedy Barry in 2018. In the series a hitman travels to LA to kill a target but ends up joining Gene’s class. Henry doesn’t know if he’d have taken the role without that
Sylvester Stallone’s still a good friend. I sold his first script. When the movie came out, it was Rocky
therapist. ‘Because of her I’m no longer that scared little boy.’
One of the reasons he sought therapy, he says, was that his constant fretting led him to fall short as a husband. He recalls the period when his wife Stacey was diagnosed with breast cancer (she has successfully fought it twice). He was 55 the first time. ‘And I wasn’t there for her when I needed to be.’ Instead he was on a film set, trying to prove something. ‘But with my children [he has three] I was determined to be the loving father I never had.’
It all comes back to his childhood. Henry was diagnosed with dyslexia — but only in his 30s. He’s written 17 novels about dyslexic schoolboy Hank Zipzer. But he’s never quite made peace with his father Harry though, who called him Dumb Dog. When Harry died in 1995 he didn’t want to go to the funeral. ‘My wife said, “We have to, and we have to take the kids. They have to go to their grandfather’s funeral.” It didn’t occur to me.’ He went to see his idol Bruce Springsteen recently, for the fifth time. ‘I’d never had the courage to ask Bruce for a selfie before. It’s fuzzy but I don’t care. I got it. I asked. It took me 78 years to get that sort of confidence. That’s sad and exhilarating at the same time.’