Henry 'Fonzie' Winkler returns to TV in USA's 'Royal Pains'

STUDIO CITY, Calif. — Fonzie's leather jacket may be in the Smithsonian, but the man who created him is still scaling the treadmill. In fact, Henry Winkler is beginning a new challenge to match the multitudes behind him.

Winkler is costarring on USA's "Royal Pains" as the slightly shady father to Hank Lawson and his goof-off brother. "It seems I borrowed money from my younger son, and I never paid him back and caused him great financial difficulties, so when I show up my son is not happy," says Winkler, in the office of his writing partner.

Even at this point Winkler admits he still gets nervous when a part is in the offing. When he met with the executive producers of "Royal Pains" for a get-acquainted breakfast, Winkler says he ordered pancakes.

"And I'm taking the syrup and pouring it all over my pancakes and chatting. I actually poured cream all over my pancakes. I thought, 'OK, they make pancakes with buttermilk, why not half-and-half? So I'm just eating it as if it was something I do."

Much of his life Winkler has pretended to be more confident than he is. He has suffered from dyslexia since he was a kid, and still does. "My brain doesn't compute. The words kind of float on the page," he says, holding his hands above the table and passing them over the surface. "I see words that aren't there and can't see words that are there. So I read very slowly, and that makes it hard to read a script."

He strained all through school, convinced he was a dunderhead, an attitude that was supported by his parents who were tough on him. But if anyone is a self-made man, it's Winkler. He earned a master's degree from the Yale School of Drama and, after the adored "Happy Days" ended, he became a top TV executive with productions like "MacGyver," the films "The Sure Thing" and "Young Sherlock Holmes," the TV movie "A Family Again" and several programs for young people.

He's more astonished than anyone by the fact that he is also an author. He and his co-author, Lin Oliver, are working on their second series about young Hank Zipzer, the world's greatest underachiever, all gleaned from Winkler's own experiences as a dyslexic boy.

He says he talks to children all across the world. "I tell them you have to figure out your gift and how you learn, at what rate you learn. If you're a slow learner it has nothing to do with how brilliant you are because you don't know what you'll be able to create. I go all over the world I say, 'I'm a husband and a father. We have two dogs. I have three children. I'm an actor, director, producer and I write. I'm in the bottom 3 percent academically in America. So you cannot tell me that you cannot achieve.'"

Beloved because of his swagger, his motorcycle and thumbs-up gesture, Winkler's Fonzie became a national icon during "Happy Days" 10-year run. And for Winkler it was a life-changing tsunami.

"I went from not dating the girl I wanted to date to having my choice," he says. "My life just exploded everywhere. And look at the people I worked with: Ron Howard, Marion Ross — one of the great women of our time — Garry Marshall is the mentor.

"That I made a living, that I was able to provide for my family, that I met the people I've been able to meet, that I've traveled where I've traveled and been honored the way I've been honored, it's just unbelievable."

Winkler, 64, has been married 32 years to wife Stacey. Asked the secret to a successful marriage, he says, "I've thought about this a long, long time. It doesn't have to do with the heart. It has to do with hearing, listening to what the other person is saying. The same goes for your children. Listen to what they say."

Winkler, who inherited his older son when he married Stacey, says, "Being a parent is the most difficult job on the planet. Brain surgery? Nothing. They made me stop, focus, listen. I wanted to be so attuned to what was going on because I did not want them to feel the sense of disconnect that I had in my life. My parents came from a different place and different time. But they never listened. They never heard or embraced my dreams until I got myself on television. Then all of a sudden they became the co-producers of Henry Winkler" (he says with a Yiddish accent).

Things are still tough for any actor in Hollywood, thinks Winkler. "Now it doesn't matter what you've done — what matters is what you've done recently. It not only bothers me for me but for people I know who are unbelievably talented who have to struggle for the next thing and it shouldn't be like that. I think it's a very idiosyncratic point of view. Fred Zinnemann, a great director, went in for an interview. And they said, 'Tell me about your career.' And he said, 'You first.'"

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Leonard Nimoy is quitting acting. It's sad to believe, but Nimoy says that his part on Fox's "Fringe" was his last role. "I've been at this for 60 years. My first professional work in film was in 1950. Sixty years, I think, is long enough," he says.

"I had decided not to do anymore acting and directing several years ago. I was called back to work to do the 'Star Trek' movie, which was very attractive. I thought it was going to be a wonderful film. I read the script and a great handling of the Spock character and an introduction of wonderful new actor to play Spock.

Then, JJ Abrams who is the executive producer of 'Fringe,' asked me to do the William Bell character. I thought I owed him that. I'm very glad that I did it because it was an exciting project."

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One of the pair of "Good Guys" on Fox is Colin Hanks. If the name sounds familiar it's because he's the son of Tom Hanks and has been hanging around Hollywood for a few years now. As the younger of the two crazy cops, Hanks says finding the balance between comedy and reality is the challenge in this show.

"I think sometimes we find ourselves kind of — or at least I do — find myself hitting my head a little bit trying to find out exactly what it is I'm trying to serve and what is the best way to do that. Am I trying to serve a sense of reality in which something funny happens? Or am I trying to serve the comedy in which reality sort of goes out the window, and it's just fun and zany and a good time? And that can be a hard thing, over the course of a show when the characters are evolving and you're going into new places and the character is growing and you maybe are resisting that change or you're looking forward to it. Trying to chart that can be a little bit different and can be difficult. But it's also, I think, just a fun show, and so you just try not to worry about it too much and you just sort of trust your gut and hopefully things turn out pretty funny."

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I interviewed Dennis Hopper shortly before his death. Hopper loved to tell stories. Here's one he told me that day:

He was working with director Henry Hathaway and they immediately locked horns. "When I came in the last day on the picture, he said, 'You know what that is, don't you?' I said, 'Yeah, those are stacks of film.' He said, 'I've got enough film there to shoot for 4 1/2 months. I own 50 percent of this studio (20th Century Fox) and you're going to do this scene my way.' We fought through the whole picture. 'I'm going to give you every line reading, every gesture. You're going to do it my way or we're sending out for lunch, we're sending out for dinner. I have sleeping bags over there. We can be here as long as you want.'

"So we started at 7 in the morning and by about 11 o'clock the head of production called. About 3 o'clock Jack Warner called. He said, 'What the hell do you think you're doing over there? Do you want Hathaway to own Warner Bros. too? Get on with it.' We sent for dinner and about 11 o'clock at night I finally cracked and said, 'Tell me again what you want.' And I did it, and that was the last time I worked in a film for eight years."

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