Happy Days Star Henry Winkler Reveals His Secret Fonzie Struggle

From his cool and confident turn as Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli in the classic 1970s and '80s sitcom "Happy Days," to his recent portrayal of self-involved acting coach Gene Cousineau in the Bill Hader's crime comedy "Barry," there's no question that Henry Winkler has made acting look easy throughout his career.

However, Winker — who landed three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for "Happy Days" — is revealing that behind the scenes his life was in turmoil because he was struggling with dyslexia. In an excerpt from his new memoir, "Being Henry," featured in People, Winkler said he didn't learn he was dyslexic until he was 31 years old. Before that, the actor wrote that he couldn't read or spell and didn't even know how to count change after using cash to pay for things.

As such, when he played "The Fonz" on "Happy Days," Winkler felt anything but cool. "Even in the midst of 'Happy Days,' at the height of my fame and success, I felt embarrassed, inadequate," Winkler wrote. "Every Monday at 10 o'clock, we would have a table reading of that week's script, and at every reading, I would lose my place, or stumble. 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. My brain and I were in different zip codes."

Even though Henry Winkler recalled his struggles with the "Happy Days" scripts as humiliating and shameful, he noted in the "Being Henry" excerpt that his fellow cast members were warm and supportive.

Winkler wrote that one way he tried to alleviate the burden on the cast was to get the script material as early as possible, but then that placed the burden on the series' creative team. "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 24 scripts ready in rapid succession," Winkler recalled in his memoir.

When Winkler finally learned that he was dyslexic, the actor admitted that he wasn't relieved to find out what was hampering his life, but upset. "When I found out that I had something with a name, I was so f*****g angry. All the misery I'd gone through had been for nothing," Winkler wrote. "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." 

The actor played Fonzie on all 11 seasons of "Happy Days," which ran on ABC-TV from 1974 to 1984. Winkler's memoir, "Being Henry" (Celadon Books), will be released on October 31.