The prince of darkness from sunny California: 7 stories about Danny DeVito (12 photos)

November 17 Danny DeVito turned 78, but no one will say that he is not close to the youth. This is the only actor in whose name college students in New York set up an altar behind a hidden wall. AT birthday honor of the great comedian Time Out recalls some facts from his life.







Danny DeVito was born in 1944 in the coastal city of Neptune, state of New Jersey. Then the family moved to Espery Park, and DeVito Sr. opened a billiards club here, so that by the age of 14 little Danny could beat anyone in billiards. However, this was not a family matter, but just a side job.

Father and mother were killed at several jobs to feed his children - and there were three of them, not counting the two that died before Danny's birth. Now the actor often says that he was very lucky - their the family was not really poor. What really represented problem is drugs: most of his friends got money drug theft and resale, and the money was spent on heroin.

As a teenager, Danny witnessed several deaths from overdose and saw guys his age die in prison. Then DeVito decided that he himself did not need this, and at the age of 14 he came to his father with requesting that he be sent to a Catholic boarding school.



Danny was the youngest in the family and grew up with two sisters - since then bright and determined women always aroused his admiration. One of them, Angela, worked as a hairdresser and was sure that for her little brother is also a good option.

Danny, having finished school, had no idea what he would do - in In any case, college certainly didn't appeal to him. And Angela had a salon, and shy short guy was very inspired by the thought "to be the only "natural" in the company of such beauties.

He entered the Wilfred Barber Academy and realized that he really likes to make people beautiful. For 18 months of work in salon sister young DeVito got a lot of regular customers, but not personal life. Then Danny came to the conclusion that you can earn more money if you also learn to be a beautician - and went to enter make-up classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.



Danny has always loved movies, so he decided to take the academy also acting course. Very quickly he realized that he had found a dream all his life, but no one wanted to give the role to a young man less than one and a half meters. His flatmate Michael Douglas joked that Danny was attracted to himself all the kids in the district, and he in response sarcastically remarked that, in fact, it's the other way around. For two years of study, she and Michael became good friends, but DeVito's career still did not work out - and then he decided to go to Connecticut.

There Danny entered one of the most respected institutions in America - Eugene O'Neill Theater Center - and began working in the summer theater. True, he did not last long there, because he learned about the future adaptation of Truman Capote's novel "In Cold Blood". Danny was sure that he and only he can play Perry Smith - so soon went to Hollywood, where he found out that Robert had already been cast for the role Blake. There was no point in going back.



"I worked as a valet and hung out on Sunset Street with hippie, I had long hair, I wore a raincoat and sneakers, I'm fine fit into the situation. But I had to do something!” - later the actor recalled.



There was absolutely nothing to do - in Hollywood, no one knows wanted a little Italian actor with almost no experience or connections. Danny returned to New York, where he shot short films on 8mm camera and participated in low-budget productions. Growth was easy some kind of curse, but gradually DeVito began to realize the benefits something that stands out from the crowd of other applicants for the roles:

“I came to auditions and they told me - oh! And watched with interest. And then they rewound this meeting in my head and thought - hmm, we already tried 20 people for the role of a servant in the Windsor wives”, they are all the same, can we take this guy, Danny? I just got two roles in Shakespeare's plays."

Wandering life and work on the stage liberated the shy a young man who recalled with horror all the school parties. He learned great to dance, he had a great sense of humor.

One day Danny was playing on Broadway and there was an aspiring actress Rea Perlman, who came to support a friend. Young people the three of us went out for drinks after the show, and two weeks later Danny and Ree lived together in an apartment that Michael Douglas helped them rent.



More than 50 years have passed since then: the couple has three children, they are several once starred in the same projects, diverged several times, then reconciled. In the end, in December 2017, DeVito and Pearlman broke up. finally, but they didn’t get divorced - both consider it pointless, because they are best friends.



In 1970, DeVito was cast as Martini in the Broadway production Based on the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. It was a 1963 revival of the play that was a hit with audiences. Five years later, Michael Douglas called his old friend Danny and said that his father had given him the film rights to Kesey's novel. He asked DeVito to reprise his off-Broadway role—and thus handed him a ticket to a happy future.

Milos Forman's film received five Oscars, and DeVito himself started to know. In addition, he met a countryman - Jack Nicholson.

Nicholson later said that at the beginning of his career he heard a lot about a shorty from Jersey who tried to conquer Hollywood. On the set he and DeVito became close, since they were born almost in neighboring townships. Nicholson, who became a star after the role of McMurphy, persuaded for every director you've worked with, hire a new friend. DeVito so far since then I am grateful to him, although by that moment I was already fully aware of everything advantages of their appearance and talent. Thanks to them, he got the role, who made him truly famous - Louis de Palma in the series "Taxi". Five years later, Danny was awarded an Emmy for her.



In general, DeVito fell in love with them on the set of "Taxi" - in five years the performers of key roles became friends and often gathered for parties with good food, drinks and cigars. However smoking them all the time Danny started after starring with Arnold Schwarzenegger in a comedy "Twins". Schwarzenegger himself recalled the time of their joint work as follows:

“As a partner on the set, Danny was not equal. He smoked cigars. He cooked spaghetti for us every week, and sometimes twice a week. He made great coffee. He always has I had a bottle of anise liqueur with me, and it was always ready have a glass before or after dinner."

There is nothing surprising in the fact that at the end of the work Arnie gave DeVito a box of cigars and a dozen cakes, although the actor was on a diet. From sweet Danny still resisted, but cigars smoked everything and since then I bought them all the time, now and then changing my favorite brand. One day after filming of The Rose Wars, he was the first to fly home class and wanted to smoke. He was told that it was forbidden.



Then DeVito got up, walked through the entire plane, greeted everyone who was awake and asked if he could smoke a cigar. All agreed, except for one person who said: "No way!". Then he paused and added, "If you don't give me one." DeVito so far still considers it to be the most pleasant flight of his life.



Michael Douglas jokingly called his friend "Prince of Darkness" because his funny looks and fantastic ability to play nasty people who never look nasty to the end. There's something in him from a cartoon character, and DeVito considers this one of his merits.

His favorite actors are the famous comedians the Marx brothers, kings absurdity. When Danny landed the role of Penguin in a Tim Burton film Batman Returns, he was just happy - it was the perfect role an operatic villain, a hero that is almost funny and at the same time scary. actors often recall with a shudder the shooting, where you have to make up for hours, but DeVito liked this reincarnation.

Over the years, he did not squander this passion, so he began to shoot cinema and producing. Thanks to this, we have Pulp Fiction, Gattaca, Erin Brockovich and Gardenland. Young American viewers who haven't seen the comedies of the 80s put to DeVito's character from It's Always Sunny in California an altar behind a toilet wall in college and make sacrifices to him with bottles of beer.



“I have succeeded. It's like with any other business. If in your heart has a desire to write stories, or draw pictures, or build bridges, if you feel that this is your passion - you must follow her. And it doesn’t matter what height or color you are, ”- said Danny DeVito in an interview.