Danny DeVito’s unstoppable ability to read in foreign languages
Danny DeVito is, without a doubt, one of the best-loved actors of all time. His short frame and iconic scratchy New Jersey voice have made him one of the most instantly recognisable stars in the film industry. But it should be added that DeVito’s excellent acting also separates him from many of his contemporary peers.
Interestingly, DeVito took on quite a task when he voiced a character in 2012’s The Lorax. What began as something of a marketing ploy turned into a challenge to his talents as DeVito not only performed his lines in English but also provided the dubbed versions in German, Catalan, Russian, Italian and Castilian Spanish.
The most amazing thing about that fact, though, is that DeVito does not speak any of those languages. Remembering his performances, the iconic actor once said: “It was kind of a crazy thing. I was speaking to the producer, and they were telling me about it coming out in various places, and I just said, ‘I wonder if I could do any of the international voices myself?'”
For whatever bizarre reason, DeVito decided to tackle what he thought would be the most difficult language to perform first: Russian. He began by working out each of the words phonetically in a test run. “To keep the energy that we have in the original, you had to make some little adjustments here and there,” he said. “But we got going, and it wasn’t bad. It took a lot longer than I imagined, but it was fun.”
As for the credibility of the Russian accent, DeVito believes that he got “pretty close” and delivered something of a southern Moscow accent. “I got pretty close with Italian, really close with the two Spanish,” he said. “German was more difficult, but it was so satisfying when it got close.”
“I had the feeling of what it must be like when people say they want to climb Mount Everest,” he added. “They get to that plateau where people don’t go any farther – you get up to that spot, and you go, ‘Holy shitballs, am I really doing that?’ Once you finished Russian, it felt like you needed to lie down and have somebody spoon-feed you ice cream. Doing the movie was a piece of cake compared to this, but it was so much fun and so rewarding.”
The one thing that the experience taught DeVito, though, was to respect voice actors. “I have a lot of respect for them,” he said, “And [they can] rest assured that I’m not going to do it again.”
