Danny DeVito turns 80: The one and only

It was impossible to predict for a long time in the actor’s amazing career that Danny DeVito would be one of the most famous comedians in Hollywood on his 80th birthday. Before he celebrated his big breakthrough in 1975 with a role in Miloš Forman’s (1932-2018) psychological drama “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, he had, among other things, worked for several years as a beautician in his sister’s beauty salon in New Jersey.

When he moved to New York in 1966 to train as a make-up artist at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, it never occurred to him to pursue a career in acting – even though he won the ladies in the beauty salon with his wit and charming manner always entertained.

As he told the New York Post a few years ago, the new environment at the academy inspired him to take an acting course himself just for fun. When he got a lot of laughs there with his natural humorous talent, he says he was suddenly “hooked” and switched to acting.

The fact that he shared a room with a young acting student named Michael Douglas (80) during this time would prove to be a great stroke of luck just a few years later. As producer of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Douglas remembered his oddball fellow student and cast him in the role of the infantile mental hospital patient Martini – alongside Hollywood superstar Jack Nicholson (87).

From then on, things went uphill for DeVito. In the cult TV series “Taxi” (1978-1983) he became known to a larger audience in the role of Louie De Palma, the grumpy boss of a New York taxi company. From the beginning of the 1980s he entered the Hollywood circus at the highest level with major roles in films such as “The Hunt for the Green Diamond” (1984) and “The Incredible Kidnapping of Mad Mrs. Stone” (1986).

Another highlight of this time is the comedy “Twins” (1988), in which he and Arnold Schwarzenegger (77) played a pair of brothers who emerged from a genetic experiment.

In 1992, star director Tim Burton (66) made him the crime boss Penguin in “Batman Returns”, giving him what is probably his best-known and most iconic role to date. As his career progressed, DeVito remained close to the director and appeared in other Burton works such as “Mars Attacks!” (1996), “Big Fish” (2003) or most recently in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (2024).

From the beginning of the 1980s, DeVito repeatedly appeared as a director with great success and landed bizarre comedies such as “Throw Mama off the Train!” (1987) or “The War of the Roses” (1989) are some cinema hits. As a producer, he also realized works such as the Oscar-nominated legal drama “Erin Brockovich” (2000) and the stoner comedy “So High” (2001).

On his 80th birthday today, Danny DeVito can look back on a breathtaking career and remains one of the greatest living Hollywood stars. As the lover of exclusive cigars reported to the magazine “Cigar Aficionado” some time ago, his short height of around 1.50 meters did not stand in the way of his career – quite the opposite.

“When I started acting, I realized that my height makes me unique,” he explained in the interview. “If I was one of six guys auditioning for a role, I knew I was the one who was most different from the others – and maybe that was exactly what the director was looking for.”