Henry Winkler, Actor HARDtalk

My guest today is an actor whose long career will always be defined

by one role.

Henry Winkler was the Fonz, the cool dude at the centre

of the US TV show Happy Days which was a worldwide hit

in the 70s and 80s.

The show portrayed an innocent, untroubled 1950s America.

It was a far cry from Winkler's own childhood which was clouded

by undiagnosed dyslexia.

How did a troubled kid come to be a symbol of sunny optimism,

and what happened to the idealised America of Happy Days?

Henry Winkler, welcome to HARDtalk.

I am happy to be here.

Let me take you back to 1974, the first airing of the show

Happy Days, which was to become a massive hit.

Did you have a gut instinct when you first played the Fonz

that this was going to happen?

No.

I was hired as a fringe character with six lines.

I would work one day a week.

I would sit in my apartment most of the rest of the week

because I couldn't play during a work week but I had no work

because I only worked one day a week.

And then remember, we did it with one camera.

Like a little movie.

We shot 12 slots.

We were number 48 in the country.

If we did not get the ratings, we were gone.

They were going to can us.

In 1975, they came up with the idea of doing it in front of a live

audience like one of the comedy shows famous during the 1970s,

and that is what we did and immediately, it turned

the show around.

How did you manage to muscle your way into becoming the key character,

the one that the show built itself around?

I did nothing but concentrate on my character and the character

muscled his way into the hearts of the world.

Let's go back to that time.

The mid-seventies and the mid-eighties.

It was a time when America was desperate for something

optimistic to think about.

You had been through Watergate, Vietnam, the civil rights struggles.

But it is strange, is it not, looking back at that show,

that it did not reflect any of the reality of a tense America.

I think that was the main thought behind the show.

Pure escapism?

Pure escapism and that is what Garry Marshall,

the genius behind that show and Mork and Mindy and Laverne and Shirley

and the Odd Couple and great movies like Pretty Woman -

he is it my don, I kiss his ring - Garry Marshall, he says,

"A lot of people make television that is really,

like, supposed to be smart.

I make recess."

(LAUGHS).

But there is something about making recess at a time like that

which is a little bit strange.

It is a timeless show.

He made it in the 1950s on purpose because you could do moral stories

without ever feeling like you were being hit on the head

with a point of view.

I suppose what I am getting at, in depicting 1950s America as that

place of tight families, close-knit communities,

where every kid got into scrapes but basically had a heart of gold,

it was fantasy.

It was never true of the 1950s or any other decade in the US.

The fact is why I think it is so popular was that you wanted

a family like that.

So, children who were latchkey kids who came home and had a key

to open their apartment and there was nobody there,

they wanted the Cunninghams, they wanted a friend like the Fonz

who they thought would take care of them.

Maybe I am over-reading politics into this but I am aware that over

the course of making this show, ten years, you had the Carter years,

which were difficult, and then the rise of Ronald Reagan

and a certain kind of conservatism.

And that whole show was really an epitome of what Reagan wanted

to believe America was all about.

Well, I met Ronald Reagan.

Very nice fellow.

Didn't buy his politics.

Are you buying my analysis?

It is a very interesting point of view that I have never thought

about because even today in 2013, people watch this show somewhere

in the world.

Yes, they are.

It was just re-run in America.

What I'm saying is, I don't know...

I think that optimism is important for human beings.

They are having a hard time getting a job, it is always difficult

to find a job.

They are beaten up in the world outside, they come home...

I don't think people want cutting-edge television.

No matter how you cut it.

I now want to bring you to a very personal story.

About your own upbringing.

Your own childhood was very far from that sunny optimism not least

because your parents had been through hell.

They were just able to escape from Germany before the Holocaust

hit the Jewish community.

And it sounds to me as though your relationship

with your parents was troubled.

Your relationship with school was certainly troubled.

My parents did not get who I was as an individual.

So, that was really difficult.

It was only after my success that they became proud.

So, I admire them for having escaped Nazi Germany.

I admire them for having started this brand new life in America.

I am grateful for the life that I had.

But emotionally, it was...

No matter how you look at it, it was for me very difficult.

And I promised myself I would be a different parent

with my own children.

And in the course of this interview, I want to get to your own parenting

and your own children, but sticking with your youth

for a bit longer...

I was born an optimist.

I believe that to be true.

Do you think your difficulties with your own parents was in part

a result of psychological damage done to them

by their own experience?

That is very possible.

Because they lost their parents.

Yes, they did.

We lost everyone.

I never had a real aunt or uncle.

They were all the community of people who escaped to Germany

and came to New York.

That community stayed very tight, they became my aunts and uncles

but they were not blood.

Lacking that wider support network within the family,

you also lacked a nurturing school.

Because let's get on to the subject of dyslexia, which has,

again, covered a lot of your life.

You had real trouble learning at school.

I have a lot of trouble learning, even today.

You don't ever outgrow dyslexia.

You learn to negotiate with it.

It was really difficult because I was told in so many areas

of my life that I would never achieve, that

I am an under-achiever.

That is the title of the book.

This character that you created to help other children...

No, it never entered my mind that I was helping anybody.

I was writing what I knew with my partner Lynne Oliver and it

turned out that children wrote back and said,

"How do you know me so well?

I thought I was alone and now I know I am not stupid!"

But you thought you were stupid because, again, not wishing to pick

into difficult stuff, your own parents told you that

you were stupid.

Yes, yes.

I have said this before and I make the joke,

they had an affectionate phrase for me, growing up -

"Dumm Hund" - it means dumb dog.

Not very affectionate at all, is it?

No, it is a name I never used on my own children.

And my son, Max, who is now a director, he was interviewed

for his first film and he said his biggest problem growing up

was that he was loved too much.

(LAUGHS).

You can smile about it and it is wonderful to see

you relate to these stories with a smile but I wonder,

when you have used phrases in the past like,

"My self-esteem was around my ankles,"

just how damaged do you think you were?

I believe that there are three very important elements to living.

One is that you remain relevant.

I don't mean to remain famous or to remain in the public eye.

I mean that you remain constantly giving, giving out of yourself

into the universe.

That is one.

That does sound a little bit Californian to me.

No, I think that is universal.

I really believe it.

As soon as a human being is dismissed as no longer useful,

I think that they squeeze up into a raisin.

But you didn't do that.

You were never a raisin.

What you did with very difficult schooling and a problematic

relationship with your parents, you found a way to express yourself

and in some ways, it is counter-intuitive

because it was acting.

You were a shy and troubled and then suddenly you flowered on stage.

I didn't know that.

I had always wanted to be an actor.

I didn't even think about why that happened or how it came

into my body, my mind, I just always had it as a dream.

Was it...

We talked about escapism before in terms of Happy Days,

but maybe it was the way you could escape?

I never thought of that, but maybe that was the reason why.

Whatever the reason, I trained to be an actor and I now

am living every day.

I am 67 years old, I am still working as an actor.

I am living my dream every day.

It's amazing.

How on Earth did you - and maybe do you, because you are

still a working actor - cope with read throughs quickly

reading and learning lines?

I was embarrassed.

A read through, just so everybody knows, is Monday morning,

we would read through the script for the writers and producers

so they could hear it.

It would be the beginning of the rehearsal to make

the show that Friday.

And you were struggling to read.

Struggling.

How did you get away with it?

I didn't.

I stumbled and I was embarrassed and I learned to live

with my embarrassment.

I finally said, "You know what?

This is me, I get through it, and this is how I get through it."

And my heart races at every read through every day.

And at the auditions, I assume you don't have to read

through any more because everyone knows what you can do.

I don't know what it is like here, but in America,

you have to audition.

How do you prepare for the script?

I memorise as much as I can.

I do the script and I make-up what I know to be the nature

of the scene.

And people say to me, "Well, that isn't what was written."

And I say, "I'll do it verbatim if I get the job." Let's go back

to Happy Days.

You have established this character of the Fonz.

But you were a highly-trained actor.

You studied acting at Yale University.

I have a master's degree.

Wasn't it frustrating when the Fonz's big thing

was slouching on the stage with his leather jacket,

drawling "Heyyy," and sticking his thumbs up?

No and I will tell you why.

I was trained to be an actor.

I was not trained to be an elitist.

So, I loved that character.

That character introduced me to the world.

126 countries.

I got letters from 126 countries, from people who said that

I made them laugh.

And they wanted to be my friend.

I would visit with my children.

We would visit the Hopi Nation in Arizona, because in the third

year, they studied Native Americans.

Is it elitist of me to say to you that this

did not stretch you?

You were talented.

That is not true because every single thing that I used...

Let me finish the story.

We went to be Hopi Nation and people would walk out of their homes

with fresh bread and give it to me because the Fonz was respectful

to Native Americans in a Thanksgiving show.

It is not elitist of you to ask the question.

I used every bit of my training as the Fonz.

In Mork Mindy, I used slow-motion training that I used with a Polish

teacher who studied a famous director.

It was when Mork was first introduced to the world.

We learned slow-motion and how to use our bodies.

I used that as the Fonz.

I love that image.

I love that you can bring so much to everything you did in that show.

I could not have brought everything I did into the show,

if I did not have the training.

How much did it hurt when the magic of Happy Days began to slip away

and people started to mock it?

And then there was that moment, it occurred relatively early

on in the decade of Happy Days.

You did that dramatic thing where you we're water-skiing

and jumped over the shark.

That phrase "jumping the shark" became a phrase

to describe gimmicky desperation.

They were laughing.

That is OK.

Happy Days is still on.

That phrase, that board game, is gone.

But we were number one for about 4-5 years after that phrase was made.

I had really good legs at that time.

So, every time the newspaper would use that phrase,

they would show me on water skis.

I looked pretty damn good.

I was OK.

The other issue for any actor, not long ago we interviewed William

Shatner.

He of course is...

Wonderful fellow.

He will always be defined as Captain Jim Kirk.

That's OK.

He is a great stage actor.

He now...

I think he invested in a company that does commercials all the time

in New York.

But my point, without going too far into him, with you...

You have lots of different shows.

You produced, you directed, you acted.

And you still do.

My proudest moment are the novels I wrote.

Really?

Not acting?

No.

They are my proudest moments outside of my children.

Well, I want to talk about the book.

Good!

It brings us back to dyslexia.

That's been a theme in your life.

Final question on acting.

Do you ever wonder, "What if I never won that part?"

All the time.

"Would I have actually gotten more out of my acting career?"

No.

I couldn't have gotten more.

I now, at this moment, have three television shows.

I act on a show called Children's Hospital,

which started as something online.

Last year, it won the Emmy for the best short comedy.

It is only 11 minutes along.

I do another show, Royal Pains, that is shown here.

So you're not bitter about typecasting?

Not at all.

I am grateful.

I live by two words: Tenacity and gratitude.

Tenacity got me into this chair and gratitude does not allow me

to get angry about most things.

Except for when my daughter uses my credit card.

It's absurd.

That's perhaps a private conversation.

If your daughter has a credit card, allow me to suggest a shredder.

I have a daughter.

How old?

She is 15.

She's getting there.

It will shock you.

It will shock you!

Yes, I know.

Your mortgage is going towards a pair of shoes.

I'll tell you now.

You've told me.

Jimmy Choo's, could have bought a house.

You mentioned something interesting about anger.

I want to have you reflect on some of the biggest stars on TV.

People like Charlie Sheen.

The behaviour some of them have indulged in.

Very different to yours.

You always spoke about being a team player.

Do you think that has disappeared?

No, there are wonderful team players.

Here is the problem.

You are treated almost like a deity.

People want to touch you in the street, want some

of your clothes.

Would like to cut your hair, to have some of it.

You cannot believe what people are telling you.

I'm still short.

I did not grow one inch because I was famous.

I am still Henry Winkler.

I know only what I know.

I am not an authority on stuff.

I don't know.

You want so badly to buy in.

You want so badly to believe, "I'm special."

"I can walk on water."

And it just isn't true.

There are lots of people who make a pact with the devil and go

down that road.

And it will destroy you.

Like you were hit by a car.

Like an oncoming train.

That kind of hubris will cut you in half.

Honestly, that is the truth.

Before we end, I would like to spend a little more time

talking about dyslexia.

OK.

You have turned it into one of your life's works.

You have written about it.

But you have, in your own life, children.

I do.

And they are dyslexic.

In your view, is it...

What do you know about it?

I know that it is hereditary.

Those families who have children who learn differently,

and are embarrassed by their child because they do not live up

to snuff, you created it.

It comes from your genes.

Parents out there.

Is there a danger of over diagnosis?

Yes.

Kids have different talents.

Absolutely.

Here is the real danger.

In not allowing them to be honest.

Telling a child they're just lazy.

In telling a child, just work a little harder.

Learn Latin and you'll be great.

There are children who are wired to learn a foreign language.

I lived in a family that spoke German.

And I know just a few words.

My brain does not comprehend it.

Why do we only celebrate the top 10% when it is the bottom 10% that

every day creates a plastered room, an art piece,

they're great athletes?

They also...

Dyslexia - you learn to meet your destiny.

Why don't we help them?

You have visited schools, you have been involved in programmes.

What's the key?

Acknowledge that the child is having trouble, realise

that their self-image is imploding, you do not have to tell a child

they are not doing well in school.

They know.

They know how hard it is to write the math problem

or learn a language.

Or read a book.

They know.

You support them and make sure that their self-image

is powerful and strong.

And they will meet their destiny.

We began by talking about optimism.

You come across to me as one of the most optimistic...

Do you know how I see my life?

Do you know how I see my life?

You know that toy that has sand at the bottom and you punch it?

And then it goes down and comes right back up?

You blow it up.

That is how I see myself.

I go down.

I get back up.

And here I am, sitting in this chair.

I have written 23 novels with my partner.

A brand new one about a ghost buddy.

It sounds like the Fonz.

"You can call me a banshee, but that's rude".

That is a great way to end.

Thank you.