Henry Winkler’s Dyslexia: How It Became His Advantage

Henry Winkler, dyslexic actor and children's author, laughing in a blue shirt in 2018 — Photo: Super Festivals, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.

Henry Winkler is the Fonz. He played Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on Happy Days from 1974 to 1984. In 2018 he won an Emmy for the comedy Barry.

He is also the co-author of dozens of children’s books. That is quite a thing for a man who has said he could not read his own scripts off the page.

He did all of it with dyslexia. For the first 31 years, he did not know it had a name.

School and the hard part

Winkler grew up in New York City. His parents were Jewish and had fled Germany in 1939. They cared a lot about school, and school did not go well.

He has said his parents called him lazy and stupid. He was grounded for much of high school. He wanted to act, but his grades were too low for him to be allowed in the school plays.

He says he was trying as hard as he could the whole time.

He still made it to Emerson College and then earned a master’s degree from the Yale School of Drama in 1970. At Emerson he once wrote a paper on a book he could not read. He worked from the table of contents and the short summaries, and he got a B minus.

When he found out

Winkler found out at 31, in the middle of his Happy Days fame. His stepson Jed was struggling with a school report, and Winkler caught himself reacting the way his own parents had. Jed was tested and found to be dyslexic. That is when Winkler realized he had the same thing, and that it had a name.

He has said his first feeling was anger. All those years of punishment and shame had been for something he could not help.

On set it had been hard too. At table reads the whole cast and crew hear the script for the first time. Winkler lost his place and stumbled over lines. He has called it humiliating. He covered it with jokes, asked for scripts early, and almost memorized them.

Henry Winkler’s dyslexic advantage

Winkler is clear that dyslexia made life harder. He also names what he built because of it.

Tenacity. He told PBS that working through the same challenge again and again made his persistence like steel. He has said he might not be where he is without it.

Listening. Reading was closed to him, so he learned with his ears.

“What I learned, I learned through listening.”

Henry Winkler, PBS NewsHour, 2023

He says that made him a better scene partner, because he really hears the other actor.

Memory and improvising. He learned to memorize fast. At auditions, when he could not read a line, he made one up. Sometimes it got a laugh.

Stories for kids like him. In 2003 he and Lin Oliver published the first Hank Zipzer book, about a boy with dyslexia in New York City. It is based on his own school days. The first series ran to 17 books. More series followed, including Detective Duck in 2023.

His memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond, came out in October 2023. In 2011 he was made an honorary OBE in the UK for his work for children with dyslexia.

What we take from it

We keep coming back to one fact. The coolest man on 1970s television was quietly dreading every table read. Then he went and wrote dozens of books anyway.

He tells kids that a hard time at school says nothing about how bright they are. We agree, and we wish someone had told him at eight.

Henry Winkler’s Dyslexia: How It Became His Advantage

School and the hard part

When he found out

Henry Winkler’s dyslexic advantage

What we take from it

Sources