2023-10-31 17:12:54
by Simona Marchetti
In his autobiography «Being Henry. The Fonz…and beyond» the 78-year-old actor, who played the role of Fonzie, aka Arthur Fonzarelli, in the popular series, spoke about the problems caused by the disorder he was diagnosed with in adulthood
The difficult childhood, the fight against a serious form of dyslexia and the pressures suffered due to Fonzie, alias Arthur Fonzarelli, the character from “Happy Days” who gave him fame. These are the salient contents of «Being Henry. The Fonz… and beyond », the first memoir written by Henry Winkler and published the day after his 78th birthday, which he celebrated on October 30. «My youngest son, Max, has been telling me for years that I should write an autobiography. And here it is,” the actor revealed in a March post on Instagramannouncing the release of the book where, among other things, he talks about his dyslexia and the problems it created for him not only as a boy, but also while he played Fonzie.
«I only discovered I was severely dyslexic at the age of thirty-one – in fact we read it in a long excerpt from his memoirs in People – . For all the years before that, I was the kid who couldn’t read, couldn’t write, couldn’t even begin to do algebra or geometry or even basic arithmetic. Even in the midst of “Happy Days,” at the height of my fame and success, I felt embarrassed, inadequate. Every Monday, at ten o’clock, we would do a table read of that week’s script, and with each reading I would miss the point or get stuck. I left out a word, a line. I could never get the attack right, which would then ruin the joke for the person doing the scene with me. Or I would stare at a word, like ‘invincible,’ and have no idea how to pronounce it or even what it sounded like.” For Winkler, that moment with the rest of the “Happy Days” cast was always an insurmountable test.
«My brain and I were on two different tracks – his story continues -. Meanwhile the other actors waited and stared at me: it was humiliating and shameful. Everyone in the cast was loving and supportive, but I constantly felt like I was letting them down. I asked to have the scripts first, so I could read them over and over again, which put further pressure on the writers, who were already under pressure every week, having to prepare twenty-four scripts in rapid succession. All this at the height of my fame and success, while playing the coolest guy in the world.”
Years later, his stepson Jed – from his wife Stacey Weitzman’s first marriage – was diagnosed with the same disorder and Winkler discovered that his problem finally had a name. “I was so damn angry. All the unhappiness I had gone through had been for nothing. All the screaming, all the humiliation, all the arguments in my house growing up – all for nothing… It was genetic! This was not the way I set out to be! And then I went from feeling this enormous anger to fighting it.”
October 31, 2023 (modified October 31, 2023 | 4:12 pm)
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