Henry Winkler

Henry Winkler
Kirk McCoy / Los Angeles Times

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Henry Winkler
TV: North side of the 6200 block of Hollywood Boulevard
Actor | Director | Producer
Born Oct. 30, 1945 in Manhattan, NY

Henry Winkler earned a master's in dramatic arts from Yale, produced such TV shows as “MacGyver” and “Mr. Sunshine,” directed such films as 1988's “Memories of Me” and wrote a series of children’s books. But it’s for his role as super-cool grease monkey Arthur Fonzarelli, a.k.a. Fonzie or the Fonz, that audiences most remember him.

Winkler said he felt lost when he hung up his iconic leather jacket in 1984 after playing Fonzie for 11 seasons on ABC's nostalgic sitcom “Happy Days.” “I didn't know what to do anymore,” he told The Times. “I didn't have the drive that got me 'Happy Days' and gave me the ability to do it for 10 years. I don't know why. But I was rudderless at the time, which is physically painful.”

While he was finding his acting rudder, he shifted to producing and directing. Winkler finally returned to acting in the 1991 TV movie “Absolute Strangers,” in which he played a husband with a comatose pregnant wife. And he didn’t look back, with roles on ABC's “The Practice” in 1999 as a dentist with a fetish who is tried for murder — he earned an Emmy nomination for that performance –- and on the Fox comedy series “Arrested Development.”

Although his career has been diverse, of all of his hats, the one he likes to wear the most is that of actor. “I am the most proud of the books I have written with Lin Oliver,” he said, “but I am the most happy acting.”

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