Winkler is costarring on
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
the adored “Happy Days” ended, he became a top TV executive with
productions like “MacGyver,” the films “The Sure Thing” and “
He’s more astonished than anyone by the fact that he is also an author. He and his co-author,
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:
“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
Things are still tough for any actor in
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.'”
———
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.”
———
One of the pair of “Good Guys” on Fox is
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.”
———
I interviewed
He was working with director
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 (
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
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.”
———
(c) 2010, McClatchy-Tribune News Service.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
