Henry Winkler Breaks the Curse of Stardom

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/m...ler-barry.html

Now in his 70s, the pop culture icon has found his true calling on “Barry,” as the king of character actors.

Even though Winkler has had a long TV and movie career, he thought Happy Days would result in him being typecast forever as The Fonz. When Winkler was recruited by Barry creators Bill Hader and Alec Berg to audition, they pushed him to dig deeper. “You need to really go after her,” Hader told him, referring to Sarah Goldberg's character. “Like if you’ve ever been really angry at a person and you just want to hurt them. You want to take her down so you can build her up. It’s how you manipulate these people.” But Winkler ended up enhancing the role of acting teacher Gene Cousineau. As Berg put it: “If we had cast what was on the page, we would’ve ended up with a much smarmier, darker monster. But the balance of warmth and pathos that Henry brings to the character through his performance — and also just through who he is and what people know about his life story — is so consistently perfect with the vibe of the character that they lie on top of each other very nicely.” Hader adds: “When other actors did the scene, it was pretty vicious/ When Henry did it, it felt more personal to him, like he could’ve been talking to himself.”