BUST-UP: Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman, here in 2010, announced yesterday that they have separated. (WENN.com)
STAR COUPLE: Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman starred together on the sitcom “Taxi” — he as the loutish Louie and she as his girlfriend, Zena. (
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Maybe it’s not always sunny in Philadelphia.
Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman yesterday stunned Hollywood with news that they’ve separated after more than four decades together.
A rep for the diminutive duo confirmed the split but declined to elaborate.
Perlman, 64, and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star DeVito, 67, had been married for 30 years and together for 41.
Their marriage had been one of Tinseltown’s most successful joint ventures.
“It’s the perfect pairing, and I know that we were meant to be together,” Perlman told the Orange County Register a few years ago.
“We are a strange couple, but I don’t know any couple that isn’t strange.”
They have three grown kids, all born during Perlman’s Emmy-winning run as the caustic waitress Carla Tortelli on “Cheers.”
Although there were rumors late last year that the couple was on the rocks, DeVito gave no hint of it in an interview in March.
“After the initial salad days, you get to be more than lovers and mates,” he told Parade. “You get to be friends. We go through ups and downs, but if there is more there than what you normally think of as romance, you can stick it out with each other forever.”
The Brooklyn-bred Perlman and New Jersey-born DeVito met in 1971, when she went to see a friend in an off-Broadway show.
DeVito played a demented stable boy who sings a nonsensical song.
“It was like a mating call,” Perlman once said. “I knew I had to meet him if he wasn’t married. Two weeks later, we were living together, much to my parents’ dismay.”
On their first date, DeVito showed Perlman a short film he had made documenting his “murder” of a large cockroach he’d found crawling across his tiny apartment.
Fresh off his role in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” DeVito scored his gig as the loutish Louie De Palma on “Taxi.” Perlman played his girlfriend.
In 1982, they got married in their LA back yard — with a record of “Our Gang’s” Alfalfa singing “I’m in the Mood For Love” playing. A horn player from the Los Angeles Philharmonic who was an ordained minister officiated.
They starred in several films and started a production firm, Jersey Films, which put out hits including “Pulp Fiction” and “Erin Brockovich.”
Asked about the success of their marriage in 1996, Perlman chalked it up to a shared sense of humor.
“We’re each others’ best audience,” she said.