DeVito, the erstwhile cosmetologist

Danny DeVito was pretty confused when he got out of high school, said Scott Raab in Esquire. He knew college wasn’t for him, and in his working-class hometown of Asbury Park, N.J., in the 1950s, he says, “there were a lot of things you could have done that were really scary if you were not totally afraid of winding up in a 4-by-6 cell—which I was.” His sister had opened a beauty parlor, so DeVito started working there—as a beautician. To make him a professional cosmetologist, she enrolled DeVito in a makeup class at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. “It was a good excuse to get out of Asbury,” says DeVito, 69, “just to take a drive up a few times a week.” While doing makeup at the Academy, DeVito caught the acting bug. “I tried it out. I got up in front of people. I had a good feeling about it.” His mom and dad were puzzled. “I remember the first time I said to my parents I was going to be an actor. They said, ‘How you gonna do that?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m going to this school that I found.’ So I went for that, and that turned out to be good.” In life, he says, “the toughest thing is just jumping off that ledge into the abyss.”

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