BETWEEN demonstrating the possibilities of his digital camera, and telling one gag after another, the diminutive US actor-director. Danny DeVito, was too busy to eat much at lunch in the Clarence Hotel in Dublin yesterday.
It's not that he doesn't like his,
Italian cuisine is on the menu for himself and his wife, actress Rhea Perlman, and their children. And he said he took a role in the new, Francis Ford Coppola movie, The Rainmaker a John Grisham adaptation, "because Francis is such a good cook".
A very busy actor, he recently finished voicing one of the animated characters in Disney's up-coming Hercules. "I play Hercules's trainer," he says. "He's a satyr - half-goat, half-man - and he's lustful, which is why I played the part."
His voice also features in the imminent release, Space Jam, which co-stars basketball megastar Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny. But although he features prominently on the poster for Tim Burton's science-fiction comedy, Mars Attacks!, he says, he has only six lines in the movie.
Danny DeVito was in Dublin to promote his new film as a director Roald Dahl's Matilda, in which he and Rhea Perlman play a slobbish couple who believe their highly intelligent daughter should be watching TV instead of reading books.
After lunch he went to Virgin Cinemas in Dublin for the film's Irish premiere and later joined Gay Byrne on The Late Late Show.
Today he flies to London where he will be joined for Christmas by his wife and children, before going skiing in Switzerland. "I hope it's not shite," he says, looking up for a reaction. "One of our family's favourite movies is The Commitments," he explains. "We have a great fondness for it so we're always saying `bollox' and `shite' and things like that." Thank you for", your advisory, Mr DeVito.