Playing the Fonz:
The response to the character when the show was first on the air was overwhelming.
But this is what I learned:
I didn't get any smarter, I was still short,
and I wasn't sure why all of a sudden girls who would pay no attention were available all of a sudden.
In time, it became very clear, that playing the Fonz was my job, not my transformation.
I really enjoyed him.
He introduced me to the world.
To this day, people invite me into their homes for dinner, whereever I am in the world.
BUT
I have never been, one day of my life, as cool as he is.
My 25 year old son Max, however, IS.
Hopefully, he will direct his first film that he wrote, this summer.
And no,
he did not cast me in it.
My parents were very, very, very, very, very short Germans. They escaped Nazi Germany.
They believed in education and did not have a clue that my doing poorly in school had nothing to do with me being lazy.
I made a promise to myself that I would never be that kind of parent.
That I would listen to my children.
And if they made sense, I would literally change policy in the way we did things in the Winkler household.