Henry Winkler Shares Career Crisis Moment

Henry Winkler has enjoyed a storied career, but even he’s had moments when he thought it was coming to an end.

Winkler told People magazine about one of those moments, which occurred while he was starring on the hit show “Happy Days” with Ron Howard.

Howard called Winkler just a few minutes before he was going to announce that he was leaving the show to pursue a career in directing.

“It’s going to come out in the press in about 10 minutes, but I wanted you to know first, I’m not coming back,” Howard told him at the time.

Winkler said that his “first thought was, ‘I’m going to die now.’”

“My great acting partner on this show, my good friend is no longer going to be here. My life is over,” he told People.

“And that was in the first two seconds,” he added. “Then I said, ‘Ron, we’ve talked about this since the beginning. All you want to do is be a director. It’s in your DNA. Go and be the best you can be, and I cannot wait to see what you do.’”

The two would soon reunite when Howard pitched Winkler on the film “Grand Theft Auto,” which the director said would only get made if The Fonz was in it.

Winkler said yes, and the movie got made.

“I even said to him, ‘If you were a brain surgeon, whether I needed it or not, I would be your first patient,’” the “Barry” star recalled. “You absolutely knew and felt this man is to be trusted as a professional from his hair to his toes.”

“Henry’s a few years older than I am. Yale-educated, and he looked at acting in a way that was — it wasn’t Hollywood,” Howard told People magazine in a previous interview, published in May.

“It was a little more intellectual. It was theater-based, and that was new to me,” he added. “But more than anything, we just got along beautifully and worked well together.”