Becoming Penguin For Batman Returns Was A Painstaking Prosthetic Process For Danny DeVito
If the Joker is the most fun Batman villain to play, The Penguin has to be a close second. If you look at actors who've portrayed the legendary rogue, the character seems to bring out some genuinely novel and committed performances. Colin Farrell had unbridled fun playing the Penguin in "The Batman," telling Total Film, "It overtook me [...] I started moving and talking and gesticulating with my hands and it felt like being a kid in the sandbox, man."
Before Farrell and makeup geniuses Mike Marino and Mike Fontaine put their stamp on the Penguin, Stan Winston and Danny DeVito had a go at it for Tim Burton's 1992 effort "Batman Returns." And in much the same way Farrell was able to disappear beneath his prosthetics, DeVito was a little too committed to the role of the Penguin. In a making-of featurette, Winston, who'd designed DeVito's prosthetics, recalled seeing the actor on set, saying, "I have never seen anybody get into a character more organically. Danny came up to me and [said] 'I love it, this is really wonderful,' and I was not talking to Danny DeVito. I mean, the Penguin was there and he was scary."
As a kid, I remember seeing DeVito's performance and similarly feeling as if I wasn't watching an actor, but a real grotesque man shuffling around the sewers of Gotham. Part of that is down to how production designer Bo Welch managed to craft an environment in which Burton's gruesome characters felt like they belonged, and DeVito's commitment to the character further enhanced the believability. But without the prosthetics and makeup work, the Penguin of "Batman Returns" just wouldn't have had the same impact. Unfortunately for DeVito, it took multiple hours just to get in and out of it.
Becoming the Penguin
To become the Penguin, Danny DeVito had to don a bodysuit that, according to Costume Designer Mary E. Vogt, weighed around 100 pounds. As she explained, "It was not out of foam. We were experimenting with silicone [...] it was such a miserable horrible thing to wear and we thought, 'How will we ever get this horrible thing on this actor?' Well, he loved it. He said, 'This is so uncomfortable and this puts me in such a bad mood that this is perfect for the Penguin.'"
But it wasn't just the body suit that DeVito had to embrace in order to play the Penguin convincingly. There was also the four-and-a-half-hour process to get all his prosthetics and makeup in place, which wasn't necessarily something the actor loved. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, DeVito explained how they managed to streamline things as shooting went on, but it was still a significant commitment just to get ready for the cameras: "We got it down to three hours by the end of the shoot. I had pounds and pounds of face prosthetics and body padding, and the prosthetic hands, which were hard to use," he said. "I kept them on about half the time."
The prosthetics themselves consisted of a thin brow piece with a connected nose, along with an upper lip. That was complemented with false teeth for both DeVito's upper and lower rows, as well as a hairpiece that was glued to the top of his shaved head. Then, there was the concoction consisting of mouthwash and red and green food coloring which created the infamous black bile that spilled from the Penguin's mouth and made a bunch of kids upset. Tim Burton was, after all, letting his freak flag fly with "Batman Returns."
Penguin was one of DeVito's standout roles
What was great about the prosthetics and makeup for Danny DeVito's Penguin is that they didn't completely bury the actor and his performance. As extensive as they were, DeVito was still able to project this elaborate performance through the body suit, makeup, and various facial appliances. That was important to the team behind his look, with Key Makeup Artist Ve Neil explaining how "We didn't want to lose the expression in his eyes because that's very important for a character."
When crafting the facial prosthetics, Makeup Designer Shane Mahan was also conscious of how important maintaining DeVito's essence was, explaining how he did tests to make sure the actor could still be "expressive" through the facial pieces. He added, "You study the pore texture and the character of [DeVito's] own face and transfer it as much as possible within this new character so that a lot of Danny is being projected forward."
That approach ultimately led to what I think is one of DeVito's best performances. His Penguin was just as memorable a villain for me as Jack Nicholson's Joker and apparently terrified both me and Robert Pattinson. But it wasn't just the actor's commitment and chilling personification of Oswald Cobblepot's homicidal rage and megalomania, but the way he also managed to elicit a modicum of sympathy for the orphan discarded by his parents. By the time Ozwald is marched into a watery grave by his beloved penguins, I felt a little pang of sadness for the deformed kid abandoned to the sewers — even if he had just tried to kidnap the first-born sons of Gotham and drown them all. Which is why I wouldn't mind if Warner Bros. called DeVito on his claim that he'd happily play the Penguin again.