Winkler’s Days

“During ‘Happy Days,’ I would come to my office every day,” said Henry Winkler, discussing his decision to stop acting.

“I would carry my little briefcase, and I would sit here and think, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ Then, ‘Why don’t you want to do this, Henry? Come on now, let’s talk to each other.’ ”

Winkler paused and looked around expectantly before throwing his hands up in the air. “And there was no answer. I mean, I just did not have the desire to do it.”

Eight years ago, Winkler bid farewell to the unflappable hood Fonzie from “Happy Days” and hung up his black leather jacket for good. He hasn’t acted since.

“I don’t know why. That is a complete mystery,” said Winkler, 45, sitting in his high-tech Paramount Studios office. “I swear to you, I sat here in a different chair, it was red at the time. Behind a different desk, this heavy brown thing, very traditional. And I literally watched the desire to act drip out my fingertips.”

Winkler’s desire has returned dramatically for tonight’s CBS docudrama “Absolute Strangers,” co-starring Richard Kiley, Karl Malden and Patty Duke.

The film, which has stirred up a reaction from opponents of abortion, is based on the court efforts of Marty Klein, a Long Island accountant, to secure the legal right to terminate the pregnancy of his comatose wife in order to improve her chances of survival after a near-fatal car crash.

Winkler said he holds no animosity toward abortion foes planning to boycott advertisers who sponsor the CBS movie. “That’s where we live,” he said. “They should protest it, if that’s what they believe, and they should live in health, really. And I hope they drive safely.

“I’m not going to make a political statement in this because it will be misconstrued. After the movie, I’ll tell you (my stand on abortion). But the fact of the matter is that this movie is very evenhanded, and it would be unfair to get into my political beliefs.”

It is partly because of Winkler’s diplomacy that he was chosen for the key role of Marty.

“What we were looking for first was an actor of extraordinary charm and likability,” said producer Gil Cates, who recently produced the Academy Awards ceremony. “Someone who would, by their sense of self, not present any kind of a political tract. Someone who would not act like a good guy or a bad guy. Someone who an audience would empathize with.”

When a co-worker in Cates’ office suggested Winkler, the producer was hooked. “He hasn’t worked in a while as an actor, and I thought that would be good for the movie, because people would be interested in checking in on him.”

For those wondering what Winkler has been doing since “Happy Days” ended its successful decade-long run in 1984, he has been busy producing for television (“MacGyver”) and film (“The Sure Thing”), and directing TV commercials, after-school specials (the Emmy-winning “All the Kids Do It”), TV movies (“A Smokey Mountain Christmas”) and feature films (“Memories of Me”).

When he first felt the desire to act slipping away from him, Winkler thought, “OK, I’m not going to panic. I’m going to be an adult. I will not just lie in my bed and pull up the blanket. And then I slowly said, ‘OK, now what?’ So I started to direct, and I really enjoyed that. I felt the same passion for directing that originally drove me for acting.”

Winkler, who was born in New York City, received a master’s degree in acting from Yale. His first real role, as a street thug, came in the 1974 feature film “The Lords of Flatbush,” co-starring another unknown, Sylvester Stallone. Soon afterward he moved to California and was cast in “Happy Days.”

Although Winkler received strong film reviews beside a young Harrison Ford in “Heroes” (1977) and a budding Michael Keaton in “Night Shift” (1982), Fonzie is the one who made him a star, a cool slice of Americana whose jacket rests today with the Smithsonian Institution.

But the fear that Winkler says motivated him as an actor in those early days may be what ultimately wore him down. “It seems that I, ah, work a lot on fear. You know, the fear of not knowing what I’m doing. The fear of not being able to do what I think I want to do. The fear of, Oh God, whatever happened to him? I functioned on fear.”

Even today, Winkler has not watched “Absolute Strangers” yet, and may not for another year or so, because “all I see is my nose walking around talking to other people.”

Winkler, who has two children with his wife Stacey, still takes on the character of Fonzie when he calls on sick children for the numerous charity organizations that the couple works with. Winkler studied child psychology at Emerson College in Boston and said he connects with kids. Perhaps that is the reason why Winkler, who looks forward to more acting roles, is not bothered that the memory of Fonzie probably will shadow him for the rest of his life.

“I understand how actors (stuck with a character) feel,” Winkler said. In the meantime, he’s getting ready to direct the comedy “Cop and a Half” for Universal Pictures.

“But if you get fed up with it, and it’s there, and it’s there all the time, you’re going to be bummed out for almost your whole life. You have to incorporate the idea that people are saying they like what you do. And what do I care? The Fonz has always been very generous to me. So whenever I travel I always make sure I write him a postcard.”

“Absolute Strangers” airs tonight at 9 p.m. on CBS.