Danny DeVito

Born on November 17, 1944 in Asbury Park, a neighborhood in Neptune Township, an important town in New Jersey, Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. is the youngest of the three children (and the only son) of Daniel and Julia, Italian-Americans from a humble family. from Basilicata, in southern Italy, who ran a small business. Raised in the Catholic faith, he suffers from ‘Fairbanck’s disease’, a genetic disorder that affects bone growth. As a child he had a hard time, because the other children messed with him, calling him a “dwarf”. As a teenager he realized that these neighborhood kids could get him into trouble, so he asked his mother to send him to a religious boarding school, the Oratory Preparatory School, in Summit. When he got out of it, he worked for a while in the hairdresser’s of one of his sisters, which forced him to get on a drawer to carry out his activity – according to his friends, this gives him the opportunity to play many jokes about it. He decided that this was not for him, so he graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in Manhattan, although to pay for his studies he had to work as a waiter. “Putting myself in front of the public to perform was a challenge for me, because I had quite unique qualities, like my height or my energy. In the end I learned that I had to use them as my strengths”, recalls the actor. “Putting myself in front of the public to perform was a challenge for me, because I had quite unique qualities, like my height or my energy. In the end I learned that I had to use them as my strengths”, recalls the actor. “Putting myself in front of the public to perform was a challenge for me, because I had quite unique qualities, like my height or my energy. In the end I learned that I had to use them as my strengths”, recalls the actor.

He began his theatrical journey at the Eugene O’Neill Theater in Connecticut and with the group of playwrights Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective in New York, in whose productions he met fellow actress Rhea Perlman , later his wife. In one of her first roles, she gave life to the mayor of New York who must deal with Sophia Loren , a woman who is outraged because they won’t let her go through the airport with an enormous cold meat, in Mortadella . The young actor begins to gain notoriety when he plays Martini, a disabled young man who nevertheless changes the rules of the games in which he participates in his favor, in the off-Broadway performance of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. When it came time to produce the film version, Michael Douglas –who was already a fairly close friend at the time– proposed that he reprise the role on screen, under the direction of director Milos Forman .

Right after, they recruited him to play the despotic boss of a taxi company in Taxi , a sitcom that swept the United States between 1978 and 1983, making him a very popular figure. For his work he won the Emmy and the Golden Globe. After fiction was finished, he chained memorable characters in feature films, such as Shirley MacLaine ‘s Texan suitor in The Strength of Endearment , by James L. Brooks , the businessman who takes overjoyed when he is told that his wife has been kidnapped in the hilarious Please Kill My Wife , by the ZAZ (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker), and Ralph, cousin and hitman of the villain ofTras el corazón verde, a mixture of romantic and adventure films directed by Robert Zemeckis, where he shared the screen with his aforementioned friend Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. The trio reprized in Lewis Teague’s bland sequel, The Jewel of the Nile . Among many other roles, he was also a low-key mobster in B-movie producer Brian de Palma’s Two Great Guys, Barry Levinson’s How to Get Hollywood , and its sequel, Be Cool , by F. Gary Gray, manager of the starring in Man on the Moon , again under the baton of Milos Forman, the unlikely twin brother of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins Strike Twice ,the doctor who attends to the muscular actor, when he becomes pregnant in Junior , another doctor in The Virgin Suicides , by Sofia Coppola, and expert insurance paralegal in Self-Defense , of the latter’s father, Francis Ford Coppola, and head of sales burned in The Big Shot .

In his extensive filmography, he stands out as a tabloid tabloid editor on Curtis Hanson’s LA Confidential . Also as The Penguin, monstrous villain from Tim Burton ‘s Batman Returns , who would use him again for Mars Attacks! , Big Fish and Dumbo .

His relationship with Rhea Perlman would make for a melodrama. He moved in with her in the 1970s, and they later married and had three children. But they tend to clash and separate in bad ways from time to time, in the purest style of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, although until now they have always reconciled. In 2012 they announced their final divorce. “He gets his eyes out on other women,” she declared. But a year later they announced their reconciliation. “My world collapsed on top of her without her,” he commented.

He made his filmmaking debut with the light comedy Throw Mommy Off the Train, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train , where he also plays the lead, a guy obsessed with murdering his hateful mother. Troubled family relationships are also present in his great success The War of the Roses , where his old acquaintances Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner give life to an ill-matched marriage, whose complicated relationship seems inspired by Danny de Vito’s love-hate relationship. with Rhea Perlman. He directed his wife in Matilda , adapted from a Roald Dahl children’s story, and reconstructed the story of the most controversial missing union member in American history inHoffa: A Pulse to Power , where he reserved the role of his right-hand man. He has continued to work as a director, but his latest works are comedies like Smoochy and Duplex , with little interest.

Instead, Danny DeVito has continued to hit the mark every time over the years as a producer. He has been the author of generational dramas ( Reality Bites ), quality sci-fi cinema ( Gattaca ), thrillers ( Erin Brockovich ) and most notably Quentin Tarantino ‘s Pulp Fiction . “I read the script for Reservoir Dogs , but they told me it was already being shot,” he notes. “I got an introduction to Quentin, and I told him I wanted to do his next movie, whatever it was. A year later the script came to me. It was very long but I read it in one night and I loved it, plus it made me laugh a lot. It was difficult to get the project off the ground because nobody wanted John Travolta.Ultimately they gave me the rights to cut the final cut, but I assured Quentin that I would respect his film.”

In the last years of his career, he has once again succeeded in the field of telecomedy, with Colgados en Filadelfia . And he reappeared with Michael Douglas , as a doctor, in the Netflix series The Kominsky Method.. In 2018 she received an unprecedented ovation, when she was presented with the Donostia Award at the San Sebastián Festival. In the place where he was born they are proud of him. “They wanted to put my name on something,” he says with a laugh. “I was given a choice between a beach, a bench on the boardwalk, or a bust at the Paramount Theater. I thought that the pigeons would shit on the bench and the chest, so I chose the beach. A month later they called me back to say it wasn’t possible but how about having a Danny DeVito Day. I thought it was very nice and I chose my birthday, so November 17 is Danny DeVito Day in New Jersey.