Henry Winkler Struggled with Lines as the Fonz, Felt ‘So F—ing’ Angry After Dyslexia Diagnosis (Exclusive)

Henry Winkler may be known as one of the most brilliant actors in Hollywood, but during his prime Happy days fame, he was hiding a secret pain that few knew about. “I spent most of my adult life terrified, on the outside looking like I had everything and mostly being worried,” Winkler, 77, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue out Friday. Born in New York to German Jewish parents who fled the Nazis in 1939, Winkler describes his upbringing as difficult. In school, he struggled with reading and comprehension. “I was a terrible student,” he writes in his new memoir Being Henry: The Fonz…and beyond.

The sense of shame was compounded by the cold judgment of his parents; in German they would call it dummer hund. Translation: stupid dog.

‘Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond’ by Henry Winkler.

Celadon books

‘Happy Days’ fame Henry Winkler stuns wife when ‘whole cinema turned up’ for first movie date (Exclusive)

Winkler turned to humor to mask his problems, eventually using his talent for improvisation to jump from the Yale School of Drama to Hollywood, where he landed a role The Mary Tyler Moore Show it led to an audition to make history Happy days.

At the height of his Fonzie fame, Winkler married his wife, Stacey, whose young son, Jed, would begin to exhibit cognitive problems in school. Eventually, the couple took Jed to an occupational therapist who diagnosed him with dyslexia. A light went on for Winkler. “He had to write a report in third grade and he couldn’t do it,” Winkler tells PEOPLE. “I told him everything I was told: ‘Go back to your room. You are lazy. Realize your potential. You are so verbal.’ I then had it tested and we read everything they said. I said, ‘Oh my God, Stacey, it’s me. I have something with a name.'”

Henry Winkler, Stacey Winkler and their three children Max, Zoe and Jed.

Tibrina Hobson/Getty

Winkler’s other two children with Stacey, Max, 40, and Zoe, 43, would eventually also be diagnosed with a learning disorder. “It’s hereditary,” says Winkler, who went on to a career as a Hollywood producer (he produced the mid-1980s hit MacGyver) and a prolific author of children’s books (his most recent book, Detective Duck: The Case of Strange Splash, it’s out now). Now he has finally written his life story. “My son Max said to me over the years, ‘Dad, you have to write a memoir. You have so many stories.’ I said, ‘I’m dyslexic. I’m not going to write a memoir.’ I dismissed it immediately. “There are so many things that I’ve done now that I immediately discarded, they have become a really important part of my life,” says the star.

Henry Winkler reveals the cover of his new memoir ‘Being Henry’

Ron Howard (left) and Henry Winkler in ‘Happy Days’.

ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

In an exclusive excerpt from his new memoir, Winkler reveals the secrets he kept while playing the famously confident Fonz on Happy days.I didn’t find out I had severe dyslexia until I was thirty-one. All the years before that, I was a kid who couldn’t read, spell, or even do algebra, geometry, or even basic arithmetic. If I bought a slice of pizza with paper money, I had no idea how much change I was supposed to get – I couldn’t even count the coins in my hand. Even in the middle of Happy Days, at the height of my fame and success, I felt embarrassed, out of place. Every Monday at ten o’clock we would have a table reading of the script for that week, and at every reading I would lose my place or stumble. I would leave out a word, a line. I kept failing to give the right cue, which would screw up the joke for the person doing the scene with me. Or I’d be staring at a word, like “invincible,” and have no idea how to pronounce it or even sound it. My brain and I were in different zip codes. Meanwhile, the other actors would wait, staring at me: it was humiliating and embarrassing. Everyone in the cast was warm and supportive, but I kept feeling like I was letting them down. I had to request my scripts very early, so I could read them over and over again – which put extra pressure on the writers, who were already under the gun every week, having to prepare twenty-four scripts in quick succession. All this at the height of my fame and success, because I played the coolest guy in the world. When I found out I had a name thing, I was so freaking mad. All the misery I went through was in vain. All that yelling, all the humiliation, all the screaming fights in my house when I was growing up – for nothing… It was genetic! That was not the way I chose to be! And then I went from feeling that huge rage to fighting it.Excerpted from Being Henry © 2023 by HenryWinkler, published by Celadon Books on October 31, 2023.

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Being Henry: The Fonz…and beyond The book will hit the shelves on October 31.

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Source: HIS Education