Getty
"My brain and I were in different zip codes," said Winkler. "Meanwhile, the other actors would be waiting, staring at me: it was humiliating and shameful."
Henry Winkler is opening up about his struggles with dyslexia, particularly before he was diagnosed and on the set of Happy Days, where he famously starred as Aurthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli.
In his upcoming memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz... and Beyond, the actor revealed that it wasn't until he was 31 that he was diagnosed, per People.
"Even in the midst of Happy Days, at the height of my fame and success, I felt embarrassed, inadequate," wrote Winkler, 77.
"Every Monday at ten o'clock, we would have a table reading of that week's script, and at every reading I would lose my place, or stumble," he continued.
"I would leave a word out, a line out. I was constantly failing to give the right cue line, which would then screw up the joke for the person doing the scene with me. Or I would be staring at a word, like "invincible," and have no idea on earth how to pronounce it or even sound it out," he shared.
Getty
Henry Winkler Details Debilitating 'Psychic Pain' After Happy Days Ended
View Story"My brain and I were in different zip codes," said Winkler. "Meanwhile, the other actors would be waiting, staring at me: it was humiliating and shameful. Everybody in the cast was warm and supportive, but I constantly felt I was letting them down."
"I had to ask for my scripts really 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 get twenty-four scripts ready in rapid succession. All this at the height of my fame and success, as I was playing the coolest guy in the world," added the actor.
He added that it wasn't until his stepson was diagnosed with the learning disorder that he thought he might have the same. Once the actor "found out that I had something with a name, I was so fucking angry."
"All the misery I'd gone through had been for nothing," said Winkler. "All the yelling, all the humiliation, all the screaming arguments in my house as I was growing up – for nothing… It was genetic! It wasn't a way I decided to be! And then I went from feeling this massive anger to fighting through it."
Since his diagnosis, Winkler has written two kids books, Here's Hank and Hank Zipzer, the World’s Greatest Underachiever for kids struggling with dyslexia.
Winkler's memoir, Being Henry: The Fonz… and Beyond, will be available on October 31st.
