Henry Winkler was ‘out of my mind’ before starting therapy at 70

Henry Winkler would not be the award-winning actor he is today without therapy.

The "Happy Days" alumnus, 80, was candid about the poor state of his mental health before beginning talk therapy around age 70 while speaking on "In Depth with Graham Bensinger."

"I was out of balance. I was out of my … mind," he said in the interview, released Sept. 9. After more than a decade of therapy, he thinks he's "getting there" in terms of making improvements he deems necessary.

Before therapy, whose virtues Winkler has extolled in recent years, including in his 2023 memoir, the Golden Globe winner was "pretty good at either figuring things out or smoothing things out in my mind or rationalizing, and I just couldn't do it anymore."

He found himself "treading water" and "going sideways," he told Bensinger. Compartmentalizing no longer worked for him, and the "Arrested Development" actor realized: "I needed to now empty myself out of all of the rancid garbage I had allowed to infiltrate [my mind]."

According to Winkler, he "didn't let anyone in," even his wife of nearly 50 years, Stacey Weitzman. But he made an exception for his pets and three children, Jed, Zoe and…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/entertainment/