SPEAKING TO A PACKED HOUSE at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek recently, Henry Winkler and Marlee Matlin shared the importance of remaining resilient in the face of challenges and having a support system.
As part of the 20th annual Lesher Foundation’s Newsmakers: Speaker Series that features influential individuals who discuss global issues, the two celebrities spent the evening sharing their journey of building careers in Hollywood despite facing significant challenges.
“If you will it, it is not a dream,” said Winkler, famously known for his role as Fonzie in “Happy Days.” “We both had a dream. We stuck to our dream that brought us here tonight in front of you. It is an amazing journey that I am so proud to be a part of.”
Winkler said his dream to pursue acting was more difficult to attain because of the obstacles he faced from dyslexia, which made reading new scripts tougher. He shared that he got around this challenge by using witty improvisation and memorization.
Known for her debut role in “Children of a Lesser God,” Matlin spoke in American Sign Language with her longtime friend and interpreter, Jack Jason, about her and Winkler’s story.
“At the core of our shared history is something called resilience, because no matter how people have perceived us — no matter what challenges have come our way — we have remained resilient,” said Matlin. “We have refused to take no for an answer. And for sure, we have never stopped dreaming.”
Winkler and Matlin were the second speakers in the 2025 Newsmakers: Lesher Speaker Series. To commemorate its 20th season, the Lesher Foundation invited the fan-favorite speakers to return. Matlin first appeared during the eighth season (2011-12), and Winkler performed during the 18th season (2023). While organizers needed to postpone the event from January to March because of the Los Angeles fires, the duo filled the Lesher Center’s 785-seat Hofmann Theatre with a lively audience.
Each series event features a local nonprofit organization. In tandem with Winkler and Matlin’s performance, the audience learned about Kidpower, an organization dedicated to teaching people of all ages safety skills — a mission that closely aligned with the evening’s theme of empowerment.
For Matlin, that empowerment started with the family that raised her and continued with the family she found in Winkler.
“I was fortunate that my parents and my brothers created a home that was inclusive and accepting, outspoken and very loud. And as much as my father used humor to disarm people, my mother made sure that I would not be limited by barriers and labels in her own way,” said Matlin, who was diagnosed as deaf at 18 months old. “She enrolled me in the local theater near our home where deaf and hearing kids performed plays in sign and song together because she loved — and she knew that I loved — to imagine worlds beyond my own.”
Winkler’s inspirational message to Matlin
It was at the International Center on Deafness and the Arts outside Chicago, Illinois, that Matlin met Winkler when she was 12 years old. Inspired by seeing him play Fonzie, Matlin approached Winkler after her performance to tell him she also wanted to be an actor. Although Matlin’s mother took him aside to say “Tell her she can’t be an actress,” Winkler told Matlin to follow her dreams and not let anything stand in her way.
She took those words to heart, and eight and a half years later, she won the best actress Oscar for her role in “Children of a Lesser God,” becoming the first deaf person ever to win an Academy Award. She remains the youngest woman to win an Oscar for best actress.
But the morning after the Oscars, Matlin woke up to columnist Rex Reed of The New York Observer calling her victory the result of a “pity vote.”
“He went on to write that I didn’t deserve the award because I was a deaf person in a deaf role, ‘So how is that even acting?’ and I was stunned,” said Matlin. “Even New York Magazine put in their two cents by saying I would never work again because what kind of product would there be for an actor who ‘doesn’t speak’? That was the first time in my life that I felt handicapped.”
She went on to say she knew she needed words of advice — something to help her navigate the barriers that Hollywood put up against her.
“That meant turning to the one person who believed in me and who encouraged me all those years; this man here,” said Matlin, pointing to Winkler.
For the next two years, Matlin lived with Winkler and his wife, Stacey Weitzman, who gave her a soft place to land and a reminder of her power.
“Particularly people with disabilities, we need to understand that we have to sit at the table just like everybody else,” Matlin shared with a reporter backstage. “Disabled women — we have to be at the table. We have a voice now.”
Winkler: From failure to The Fonz
Matlin’s determination to become an actress parallels Winkler’s dedication to chasing his acting career.
“I don’t know how it came into my mind, I don’t know how it came into my body,” said Winkler. “If people were put on this Earth to do something, I was born to be an actor.”
While his parents did not want him to pursue acting, Winkler was committed to his dream, which he began by attending Emerson College and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. After trying and failing to land a role on Broadway or in a movie, he picked up paid acting work in commercials.
“I could do plays for free in basements of churches in New York. No one came to see them, but I was doing them,” Winkler said.
Heeding the advice of his agent, Winkler moved to California to advance his career. Upon arriving, he briefly stayed with a woman he knew from his time at Emerson.
“I lived in the little hallway between the mirror and the bathroom, next to a little door,” Winkler said.
His second audition in California was for the Paramount TV series “Happy Days,” in which he landed the role of Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli. At his audition for the show, Winkler turned to quick-thinking improvisation to leave a lasting impact on the directors.
“I have hair down to my shoulders. I walk in — 11 people in the room. I have six lines,” said Winkler. “I think honesty is the best policy. I said, ‘This sweat stain looks like the Hudson River running under my arm. It is in direct correlation to the fear running through my body.’ I threw the script up in the air, I said to the guy who was reading with me, ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ and I left.”
A few weeks later, the executive producer called and offered Winkler the role. Winkler then told an audience with fond memories of his time on the show what his first day at the studio was like.
“(The script) says go to the mirror, comb your hair,” said Winkler. “I go to the director, I said, ‘I will do anything, but I want to be original. Every actor that has played this character has combed their hair. I’d like not to do that, okay?’”
Laughing, the director responded by telling him to stick to the script. While still sticking to the script, Winkler added his own flair that changed everything.
“I walk to the mirror, I pull out my comb, and (say) ‘Look at that — I don’t have to ’cause it’s perfect.’ And that moment defined my character for the next 10 years,” said Winkler. “You have to just go with your instinct. Your mind knows some things, your tummy knows everything. So I went with my instinct.”
Raising little diamonds into roses
During the Q&A, moderated by KTVU Fox 2 consumer editor Tom Vacar, Winkler touched on the importance of parents acknowledging their children, even if they do not understand the challenges they face.
“I would say the most important thing is to see who’s in front of you and to hear what that person is saying to you instead of making an instant judgment,” said Winkler, when asked what advice he would give parents of newly diagnosed kids. “What I’ve learned is a heard child is a powerful child.”
Matlin, who felt empowered by Winkler listening to her as a child, shared a fable called “The Diamond” in which a craftsman offered to fix the king’s cracked “perfect diamond.” The craftsman carved a rose where the crack met the point and said, “Now, instead of a long spindly crack, the diamond has the most exquisite rose with a long magnificent stem from the very top to the very bottom. Now, it is not only repaired, but in truth, it is more than unique, more remarkable, more perfect than before.”
“This man, Henry Winkler, took me, a little diamond, and helped me bloom into a beautiful rose,” Matlin concluded.
Then, turning to Winkler, she added, “Dearest Henry, though the world thinks I live in silence, because of people like you, silence is the last thing the world will ever hear from me.”
Loujain Habibi is a 12th grader at Liberty High School in Brentwood. Ishita Khanna is a 10th grader at Heritage High School in Brentwood.
Contra Costa Youth Journalism coverage of the Newsmakers series is made possible by support from the Lesher Foundation and Bay City News Foundation. Stories are produced independently by the CCYJ news team.
This story originally appeared in CCSpin.