“I bought this sweater just for tonight,” Henry Winkler (78) – famous for his role as The Fonz in US sitcom Happy Days – tells an audience at Dalkey Book Festival on Friday evening, pointing at his new green garment. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve also eaten my weight in soda bread.” The crowd warmed to his candour and the informality he brought to the Dalkey Book Festival.
If there’s anything he’s good at, it’s being cool. “People say to me all the time, ‘How can I be cool?’ And I finally learned: you being your authentic self is cool and magnetic. You being the truest you – honest to God – you are going to be like a power you can’t even believe.
” Winkler’s talk is saturated with little nuggets of life advice, one could almost walk away with a calendar-full of snippets. “He should be a life coach,” one women is later heard saying. Despite this, he’s candid about the fears underneath his confident shell: “I’m still nervous before [auditions],” he says.
“I was nervous before I came on stage [tonight].” His appearance at the festival comes fresh off the release of his memoir, Being Henry, which tells of the ups and downs of stardom, his struggles with dyslexia, and, of course, The Fonz. Last October the book released to critical acclaim and became a New York Times bestseller.
In it, he recounts his time on US sitcom Happy Days, where he achieved star status playing Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, better known as “The Fonz”. Duri.
