The iconic John Travolta role Henry Winkler regrets turning down: “I was dumb”
Say what you will about his acting talents or his ability to read a teleprompter at the Oscars, John Travolta has embodied some of cinema’s most memorable characters over the past five decades.
With that signature dark quiff and chin dimple to rival Cary Grant, his face has adorned the walls of many a film fan, be they swooning teenage girls in the late 1970s or hardcore Tarantino bros in the early 2000s. Heck, it’s possible that someone out there was even willing to put money down on some Battlefield Earth merch, though that would hopefully have been out of irony rather than genuine enthusiasm.
There are plenty of actors who would throw all pride to the wind to have a career like Travolta’s, but one of them missed the boat early. Henry Winkler, TV’s one-hit wonder-turned character actor, had the opportunity to be Travolta before there was Travolta. This was in the ’70s, when the young Mr Winkler was setting hearts aflutter with his sideburns and leather jacket in Happy Days, and he wasn’t too keen on repeating himself.
In his memoir, the actor remembered being offered the role of Danny Zuko in Grease, only to turn it down out of the fear of being typecast. “I was dumb,” he told People, “I spent so much energy, so much time, I spent so many sleepless nights thinking, ‘how do I not get typecast?’”
Typecasting is practically inevitable when you play one of the most popular characters on one of America’s most popular sitcoms for a full decade, and it’s safe to say that Winkler has never fully stepped outside the Fonz’s shadow. Still, you can see why, after playing an outgoing Italian-American with decade-specific hair and wardrobe, he might shy away from playing into the hands of the exact stereotype, and even Travolta could have had the same qualms.
He had just broken through as a young star to watch with the 1977 disco hit, Saturday Night Fever, in which he played a hot-headed Italian-American with above-average hip mobility. At just 23, he might have had some fears about cementing his persona by jumping into a similar role immediately afterwards, but he took the plunge. Fans of Hollywood musicals are no doubt still thrilled that he did, as Danny Zuko was nothing short of electrifying, glinting and gliding his way through dance numbers like no high school student ever has.
It launched his career, and he went on to play a range of leading characters, from swapping bodies with Nicolas Cage in Face/Off to attaining telekinetic powers after getting punched by an intergalactic beam of light in Phenomenon, with casting directors allowing him to do it all for decades, no questions asked.
On the other side of the equation, Winkler has had to fight to become anything other than ‘the Fonz’ in the eyes of his audience, and it ultimately required him to settle for character acting rather than attain leading man status. After the end of Happy Days in 1984, he was relegated to TV movies and minor roles in TV shows for well into the late ’90s.
Eventually, though, he found his feet playing scene-stealing supporting roles in shows like Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, and Barry, even managing to crack the movie code by landing roles in everything from The Waterboy to The French Dispatch. He might never have been a movie star, but he has proven that he is more than a stereotype to be boxed in.
