Henry Winkler Reveals That He’s Been Feuding With Tom Hanks For The Last 30 Years

Henry Winkler hasn’t had many happy days with Tom Hanks in the course of the last three decades.

In an appearance this week on Watch What Happens Live, the Barry actor revealed that he and Tom have not gotten along very well since their ill-fated pairing on the 1989 movie Turner & Hooch. As E! News noted, Winkler had signed on to direct the movie, which starred Tom Hanks and a dog teaming up to solve a murder, but was taken off the job in less than two weeks.

“I was directing that movie for 13 days and then I was called into [producer] Jeff Katzenberg’s office and he said, ‘You have everything with you? Go home,’ ” Winkler recalled.

While Winkler didn’t reveal what role Hanks may have played on his firing, the Happy Days actor made it clear that he’s not on the best of terms with Tom over the 30 years that have followed.

This isn’t the first time that Henry Winkler has hinted at a feud with Tom Hanks. In a 1993 interview with People, Winkler admitted that he and Hanks didn’t get along too well during the 13 days they were together on the set of the movie.

“Let’s just say I got along better with Hooch [a canine] than I did with Turner [Hanks],” Winkler said.

It’s not exactly clear what a feud would look like between Henry Winkler and Tom Hanks, two actors known for being among the most humble in Hollywood. Longtime entertainment reporter Pat Gallagher wrote a story on the nicest A-list celebrities for The Huffington Post and put both Winkler and Hanks on the list.

Tom Hanks has not given his side of the story or shed any light on how the feud came about, but it doesn’t appear that getting Winkler sacked from Turner & Hooch (assuming that it was Hanks who orchestrated his ouster) helped the movie too much. The family-friendly comedy earned only mixed reviews, making close to $71 million at the box office which was good for the 16th highest-grossing movie of 1989.

But the apparent feud has not seemed to hurt either man’s career, either. After Turner & Hooch, Tom Hanks moved away from slapstick comedy and became a leading man in Hollywood, earning a number of Oscar-worthy roles in the years that would follow. Henry Winkler has also reinvented himself after making his mark as Fonzie on Happy Days, taking on iconic roles in Arrested Development and now in Barry.