The whole idea of acting is that you draw from your life experiences if you can, you try to use the things that you’ve done. In my sister’s beauty parlor where I worked as a hairdresser, I was dealing with people every day in a lot of different ways; so you fall into certain powers, knowing what makes people smile, what makes people comfortable. It’s all about relationships. I think it helped a lot in that I was exposed to a lot of people, every day from morning to night. Those experiences free you, give you a bit more comfort talking to people, especially people you don’t know.

More from Danny DeVito

View all quotes →