Henry Winkler: The Fonz Who Couldn't Read His Lines

Last updated: November 2026. Originally written by Antonella Vaccarino for The Reading Well.

Henry Winkler played the coolest man on television. Off screen, he was hiding something: he could barely read the scripts. Winkler has severe dyslexia, and he was 31 years old, already famous as the Fonz, before he had a name for the difficulty that had made school a misery.

"I am completely dyslexic. I was told I would never achieve… And now I am the author."

— Henry Winkler, on the publication of his 40th children's book, 2025

"Stupid and lazy"

Winkler was born in Manhattan to Jewish parents who had fled Germany in 1939, just before the Second World War. He was a bright child, but school was a daily failure. He worked hard at reading and math and still couldn't meet his parents' expectations; they grounded him for poor grades and sat him at his desk to study for weeks on end. His father called him "dumb dog."

“When I was growing up in New York City, no one knew what dyslexia was. I was called stupid and lazy, and I was told that I was not living up to my potential. It was, without a doubt, painful. I spent most of my time covering up the fact that reading, writing, spelling, math, science — actually, every subject but lunch — was really, really difficult for me. If I went to the store and paid the bill with paper money and I was given coins back for change, I had no idea how to count up the change in my head. I just trusted that everyone was being honest.”

Despite all of it, Winkler graduated and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama in 1970.

Becoming the Fonz, by improvising

His big break was Arthur Fonzarelli, the Fonz, on Happy Days. The part started small; Winkler's charisma made him a co-star. But reading never got easier. Given two days to learn his lines, he would still arrive at the studio unable to reproduce them as written, so he improvised, and made it look like confidence:

“You learn to negotiate with your learning challenge. I improvised. I never read anything the way that it was written in my entire life. I could instantly memorize some of it and then what I didn't know, I made up and threw caution to the wind and did it with conviction. And sometimes I made them laugh, and sometimes I got hired.”

Discovering dyslexia at 31

The answer came through his stepson. When Jed's learning difficulties were assessed and identified as dyslexia, Winkler, then 31, recognized himself in every line of the report. His own children, Max and Zoe, were later found to have dyslexia as well.

In 2003 his agent suggested he write children's books. Winkler had, in his words, “never for one second thought about writing books”; he was a man who couldn't read comfortably. With Lin Oliver he created Hank Zipzer, a bright fourth-grader with learning difficulties, modelled on the young Winkler: the same West Side building, the same neighbourhood, even Ms. Adolf, “the worst teacher in the universe.” The original series ran to 17 books, and young readers wrote to him asking, “How do you know me so well?” Parents wrote too. Their children, who had never finished a book, were reading the whole series.

What he's doing now

2025: Detective Duck: The Mystery at Emerald Pond, his latest series with Lin Oliver, brought his children's book count to 40. The same year, Henry Winkler: A Little Golden Book Biography was published featuring an accessible font for readers with dyslexia, and he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

2024: He received the John P. McGovern Award from Smithsonian Associates, given expressly for using his voice to amplify important discussions about dyslexia.

2023: His memoir Being Henry: The Fonz … and Beyond became an instant New York Times bestseller. His son Max had to talk him into writing it: “I'm dyslexic. I'm not writing a memoir.”

In his own words

“A learning challenge doesn't have to stop you. Every child who writes me a letter about Hank Zipzer, I write back. In every letter I include: your learning challenge will not stop you from meeting your dream. Only you will stop yourself from meeting your dream.”

“You don't have any idea how powerful you are and what you can achieve. You literally cannot give in to your fear.”

How do we know they have dyslexia?

Winkler has spoken about his dyslexia openly for decades: in interviews, in his 2023 memoir, and in the citation for his 2024 McGovern Award. He was identified at 31 after his stepson's assessment; his children Max and Zoe have dyslexia too.

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Photo Credit: Henry Winkler: Mark Naudi [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons