Royal | News - Prince Ricardo De La Cerda
When most of us envision meeting a member of the royal family, it’s understandable to feel a little nervous.
After all, it’s not everyday that you get to rub shoulders with someone that lives in a palace, has a far from conventional day job, and is part of the societal elite that many people can only dream of aspiring to.
Yet instead of the pomp and ceremony you might expect from meeting a royal, one Hollywood legend has revealed that his encounter with Queen Camilla was anything but.
Henry Winkler, who fans may know best for his role as Fonzie in US sitcom Happy Days, had the opportunity to meet with the Queen and her husband King Charles earlier this Summer – and it was world’s away from what you might have expected.
Recalling the experience to PEOPLE, Henry explained that he was met by the monarch and his wife during a tour of Ireland, Scotland and England while promoting his memoir Being Henry.
“We were invited to Ascot, the royal races. You heard about it in My Fair Lady, you hear about it all through history, and we were invited,” he gushed to the publication, before revealing he had sourced a “top hat and tails” especially for the prestigious event.
Once there, the King and Queen “arrived in an open carriage pulled by these incredible horses, then we have a three-course lunch,” he recalls – but the experience kept getting better, when the Queen herself made a surprising request of the star.
“Then all of a sudden, a rumour or a buzz goes through the room. ‘The Queen wants to meet Henry.’ So we walk down onto the paddock onto the green, and all of a sudden these 12 men in forest green cutaways march out,” he said.
“She comes in white in the middle of them and walks up. I tip my hat, and I talk to her like she was my Aunt Liz. There is no disconnect. There’s no royalty. There is just this lovely woman who knows about my children’s books, the Detective Duck series.”
The heartwarming encounter clearly cemented its place in the actor’s heart, with his fond memory of the encounter having added an extra special edge to his already eventful trip.
In addition to meeting the royals, Henry also went on to stop by Bristol, where he recorded a new VoiceOver for DIRECTV’s new “For The Birds” campaign.
Teaming up with Steve Buscemi, the duo star as city-window peeping pigeons in an advert for the TV service’s sports coverage which includes both NFL and college football games.
Harkening back to his New York roots, Winkler’s flying-alter-ego of a wise-cracking NY pigeon, even found him missing the state he once called home.
“I miss New York,” he says. “You can take the boy out of New York, but you can’t take New York out of the boy. I see myself as a transient now. I’ve been here since ’73. My wife is Los Angeles; my children, my grandchildren, my dogs, my home, my work. But I’m always thinking, ‘I’m going back.’”