New York Magazine's Vulture Festival 2024. Photo Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Vulture.
“This is my third time doing this. I look forward to it every year.”
This past weekend, Henry Winkler taught an acting workshop at Vulture Festival in Los Angeles. This is where he works directly with actors - in front of an audience - and teaches them all of the tips and tricks he’s learned over the years.
There is perhaps nobody better to teach an acting class. That’s because Henry Winkler knows the ins and the outs of the business. You are hard-pressed to find someone who has experienced as much - as an actor, a producer, or a director - as Henry Winkler has. Also, the fact that he won an Emmy for playing an acting instructor in HBO’s Barry makes him the perfect person to talk about acting.
How Henry Winkler decides the acting roles he takes.
When asked about how he decides to take on certain roles, he tells us, "You know how I feel it? My stomach. My tummy. Or if I have an instinct about it, I just do it.”
But it’s actually not the actor who is the most important part of the production process. For him, it’s the writer. As he tells us, “The writing is the beginning and the end. The writer is the most important part of the process. Without a writer, you have nothing. The director, the producer, the actor, the costume director has nothing to hang their hat on.”
After becoming a bonafide superstar as the Fonzi on Happy Days in the 1970’s, he represents the rare actor who was able to eventually break out of being typecast. That’s because he was always open to new experiences, however they might land in his lap. After the show wrapped in the 1980’s, he became a producer - of shows like MacGyver - and a director. From the 1990’s onwards, he started to reach new legions of fans in films like The Waterboy and in TV shows like Arrested Development and Children’s Hospital.
Speaking of the latter, before our interview started, Henry ran over when he saw Rob Corddry on the carpet, who cast him in the Adult Swim series. “He was my boss,” he tells us. “He invited me to be part of Children’s Hospital. He wrote it, created it, and then invited me to be part of Children’s Hospital.”
As Corddry tells us about casting Winkler, “We had just started writing our second season. And our manager, Peter Principato, said ‘Hey Rob. I think I represent Henry Winkler.’ I was like ‘What? Good for you.’ He was like ‘You want me to try and get him on your show?’ I was like ‘Yes please! He is formally invited to join.’ Peter asked him and he said yes. From that moment on, he was one of my favorite characters in that Henry is game for anything. He might not sometimes get the joke - and by the way, sometimes the jokes are funny because they’re not get-able - but he’ll do it.”
Who Henry Winkler hopes to work with next.
When you’re an icon like Winkler is, you’d think you can cross it all off the bucket list. Yet there is still one actor that has evaded him that he’d love to work with.
He tells us, “I’d like to do a scene with Robert De Niro. I’ve met him, I have a selfie with him. We had sushi at separate tables on the same night, I adore him, I’ve never worked with him.”
