Henry Winkler talks about his dyslexia. “Even when I was at the height of fame with Happy Days, I felt inadequate” – Corriere.it

The difficult childhood, the struggle against a severe form of dyslexia and the pressure that Fonzie was under as Arthur Fonzarelli, the character from “Happy Days” that made him famous. These are the main contents of “Being Henry. The Fonz…and beyond,” Henry Winkler’s first memoir, 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 Instagramannounces the publication of the book in which, among other things, he talks about his dyslexia and the problems it caused him not only as a boy but also during his role as Fonzie.

“I didn’t find out I was severely dyslexic until I was thirty-one years old – 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, geometry, or even basic arithmetic. Even in the middle of Happy Days, at the height of my fame and success, I felt embarrassed and inadequate. Every Monday at ten o’clock we would read that week’s script at the table, and every time I read it 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 was staring at a word like “invincible” and had no idea how to pronounce it or 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 added even more pressure to the writers, who were already under pressure every week and had to prepare twenty-four scripts in quick succession. And 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 misfortune I had endured had been for nothing. All the screaming, all the humiliation, all the arguments in my house growing up – all for nothing… It was genetic! That’s not how I imagined it! And then I went from feeling this enormous anger to fighting it.”