Happy Birthday!

Arnie’s “twin” Danny DeVito is 80 years old

Hollywood joker Danny DeVito celebrates his 80th birthday on Sunday.

(Bild: APA/AFP/ANGELA WEISS)

Danny DeVito maintains a good friendship with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two were unequal "twins" in 1998. In "Junior" (1994), they played scientists researching a fertility drug who impregnate one of them during a self-experiment. On Sunday, the Hollywood joker, who is only 1.50 meters tall, celebrates his 80th birthday. 

DeVito keeps himself fit in an unusual way. The actor and comedian helps out with jumping exercises. He has a small trampoline in his dressing room on which he gets his lymph glands and blood pumping just before every performance, DeVito told the "Kelly Clarkson Show" in January.

However, he admitted with a smile that he had to hold on to the wall or a coat hook.

Most recently, he appeared on stage with his eldest daughter Lucy (41) on Broadway in New York in the play "I Need That". In the father-daughter comedy, he plays a grumpy messie who is threatened with eviction from his apartment.

Numerous comedies filmed
In his long Hollywood career, DeVito has made a name for himself primarily with comedies - alongside "Gemini" and "Junior", "Schnappt Shorty" is also one of his greatest successes.

He and Austrian Hollywood export Schwarzenegger made a funny pair on the Oscar stage last March when they presented an award.

Danny DeVito still has a deep friendship with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two appeared together on the Oscar stage at the beginning of the year.

(Bild: APA/Getty Images via AFP/GETTY IMAGES/Handout)

They were not invited together as twins, but because they had both tried to kill Batman, the stars joked. DeVito had transformed himself into the Penguin villain for director Tim Burton in "Batman Returns" (1992). In "Batman & Robin", Schwarzenegger became Mr. Freeze.

Back in front of the camera with Arnie soon?
Fans of the duo can hope for another collaboration: "Arnold and I are good friends," DeVito told CNN in March. They had met long before "Twins". They are now working on a film project together again. He hopes that there will soon be "a nice script" for it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito played together in the 1988 film.

(Bild: mptv / picturedesk.com)

However, it is not about a sequel to "Twins". "We missed Twins 2 because he became governor - he should have done Twins 2 instead of becoming governor," joked DeVito in an interview with the men's magazine "GQ". Schwarzenegger was governor of California from 2003 to 2011.

Still plenty to do
DeVito has no shortage of roles. Most recently, Tim Burton brought him in front of the camera for a cameo appearance alongside Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice". As a janitor in the afterlife with yellow slime running out of his mouth, DeVito fits perfectly into the cabinet of horrors.

Since 2006, he has been starring in the black humor comedy series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" about the owners of an Irish bar in Philadelphia. Just in time for Christmas, he can be seen in the family comedy "A Sudden Case of Christmas" together with his daughter Lucy.

Detours to the movie
DeVito was born in 1944 in Asbury Park, a coastal town south of New York in the US state of New Jersey. His mother was already 40 years old and they didn't know whether he was "a baby or a tumor", the Italian-American joked in an interview with the New York Times in 2018. His first job was as a helper at an amusement park on the beach. Even then, he was passionate about going to the movies.

He came to film in a roundabout way - via his sister's hairdressing salon. He first took make-up artist courses, then acting lessons. In New York, the young DeVito shared a cheap apartment with his student friend Michael Douglas.

Danny DeVito received his star on the "Walk of Fame" in 2014

(Bild: APA/EPA/PAUL BUCK/dpa )

Douglas brought him from New York to Los Angeles in 1975 for the psychological drama "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", which he produced. The role of patient Martini in a psychiatric institution was DeVito's springboard for his Hollywood career. This was followed by the TV series "Taxi" as the curmudgeonly boss of a cab company and the adventure film "The Hunt for the Green Diamond" (1984) alongside Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

Also directed
Barry Levinson cast him in "Tin Men" as a salesman for aluminum facades. Tim Burton made him the gangster boss Penguin in "Batman Returns". With John Travolta, he shot the cult film "Snap Shorty". As a director, DeVito enjoyed success with the quirky comedy "Throw Mom Off the Train" and the divorce satire "The War of the Roses". As producer of "Erin Brockovich" with his production company Jersey Films, he received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.

DeVito is still close friends with Oscar winner Michael Douglas, who is the same age. When Douglas played an ageing actor with frustration and prostate problems in the Netflix series "The Kominsky Method", DeVito provided laughs in a guest role as a urologist.

Separated, but not divorced
DeVito met actress Rhea Perlman while he was still a student. After 30 years of marriage with three children and film appearances together, the couple announced their separation in 2012. They are not divorced, but they live separately. They are doing great as a family, the actor assured Fox News in an interview in May. "We're grandparents and we see each other all the time."

The agile prankster is also tireless on the X platform, where the ultra-liberal posts political (he is a fan of left-wing politician Bernie Sanders) and funny things.

Under the hashtag "Trollfoot", for example, he shows photos of his bare right foot, which he holds up to the camera: on the beach and under palm trees, in front of the Berlin Wall, at the Empire State Building, with a cat sniffing his toe or on a pool table.