Henry Winkler opens up about the unexpected career he considered before becoming an actor

Henry Winkler is opening up about what career path he would have chosen had he not gotten into acting.

During a recent interview on the “You Could Make This Beautiful” podcast, the 80-year-old actor shared that he almost decided to become a child psychologist, because he was so dyslexic that “whatever I could do, with the least amount of education” was what he wanted to do.

“I understand children. I’m able to listen, I think, to children. I’m interested in what they have to say and how they are. I marvel at their prowess in the universe,” Winkler said. “Yes, I would work with children.”

Ultimately, the actor found fame playing Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on “Happy Days” from 1974 to 1984, a role which earned him three Emmy Award nominations.

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The actor has spoken about his lifelong struggle with dyslexia many times in the past and about how he learned to manage it in his career.

“Destiny is very strange, because I’ve chosen a profession that is so unbelievably difficult, not only to survive in, but to participate in for me,” he told “PBS News Weekend” in November 2023. “When we were doing ‘Happy Days’ or any table read, which is the whole cast all the producers, the directors, everybody on the crew listening, for the first time to the script. I couldn’t read off the page. And it was embarrassing. It was humiliating. I covered it with humor.”

To manage the obstacles dyslexia presented in his career, Winkler explained that he would “literally read one word at a time” and ask for the script to be delivered to him ahead of time so that he would “almost memorize it” so that by the time it came to the table read, “I could read it with a flow.”

While the actor had struggled with dyslexia his whole life, he didn’t receive a diagnosis until he was in he was 31, and his young stepson was diagnosed with it, telling PBS that he was initially angry after getting a diagnosis.

“I was because I was humiliated. I was constantly browbeaten. I was punished, grounded for most of my life,” he said. “Then the next stage was all right, so I have this thing. Now I have to learn to negotiate it because it doesn’t go away. It is the wiring in your brain.”

He later learned to reframe the situation and began thinking, “maybe I would not be sitting in this chair” if he hadn’t gone through “the challenge to constantly work through that made my tenacity, like steel.”

Following his time on “Happy Days,” Winkler continued acting, introducing himself to a younger audience in the 1998 movie, “The Waterboy,” alongside Adam Sandler.

He then appeared in TV shows such as “Arrested Development,” “Parks and Recreation” and “New Girl,” before landing a starring role in the hit HBO Max show, “Barry,” playing Gene Cousineau, an acting coach who finds himself befriending an assassin.

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The role earned him his first ever Emmy Award win in 2018.

“Be yourself, be honest about your ability, prepare so that you are not a flash in the pan,” he said backstage after his win, per Variety.

“When I first started here in Hollywood … I thought of myself as a tree or sapling. I planted. I wanted to grow and be strong until I couldn’t do this anymore. And what a great tree it is.”