"All of my close friends love limoncello,” says Danny DeVito. “You know who they are…” Not many people can get away with a line like that, but he’s right, I could probably guess at a few. “…From George Clooney, to Michael Douglas to Jack Nicholson…” he obliges, erasing any conceivable doubt. 

Danny Devito’s Limoncello is not only the toast of Hollywood’s inner circle. The eponymous brand launched in the US in 2007 but is now circling global markets, capitalising on DeVito’s stature (not physical) and Italian name. But let’s head back to Beverly Hills – it would be remiss not to indulge in a little celebrity digging. I wonder, for instance, which of DeVito’s Hollywood pals is known to like a lemon liqueur tipple too many? Or, as I put it to the man, who would you least trust with your last bottle of limoncello? “If you mean who would drink it all in one sitting,” he replies. “I would have to say Michael Douglas – but I would be helping him.” 

Devito’s entrance into the global drinks world surely makes him the highest profile liqueur owner in the world (take that, Pharrell Williams). And, like it or not, he joins what is perceived to be an unholy church of name-lenders presumably hoping to pile a few more dollar bills on top of their mountains of cash. But why DeVito? An established star estimated to be worth upwards of $70m who is still very much in Hollywood favour at nearly 68. Perhaps more pertinently, why limoncello? 

DeVito explains: “I am an Italian who loves lemon-based liqueurs – I am a giant fan of limoncello and always have been. It’s a wonderful drink that should be enjoyed by everyone.” 

Perhaps unlike some of the industry’s other name-lending mega-stars, DeVito does indeed drink and enjoy the product he sells. Back in 2006, on US morning chat show The View, he appeared drunk, admitting he had been partying most of the night with George Clooney and didn’t know whether he had slept. “I knew it was the last seven limoncellos that were gonna get me,” he said to a live studio audience. Three million people have watched the clip. Which, in marketing value, is three million people that would trust the authenticity of a Danny DeVito limoncello endorsement, should he ever launch one.

With an actor’s timing, in 2007 he launched his brand alongside wife Rhea Perlman (Carla from Cheers). Greeting press at the unveiling was his own limoncello-themed song (definitely worth a listen on Youtube) followed by more on his inseparable bond: “I’ve been drinking limoncello since I was a kid, it’s in my heritage. My family would always have a liqueur at the end of the day and one of them was always limoncello. People send me cases of limoncello. My house is full of limoncello and, wherever I go, people buy me limoncello.” Even in a world as cynical as this, it’s safe to say Danny DeVito genuinely likes limoncello.

In his make-up

He also likes a project. Perhaps that came from his dad, Daniel DeVito, who at one time or another owned a drycleaners, dairy business, luncheonette and a pool hall in the family’s home state, New Jersey. DeVito junior certainly explored his options in the early days. He was a hairdresser at his sister Angela’s salon, then took a cosmetics course at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. The arts must have been dramatic – by 1966 DeVito had downed his eye-liner in favour of acting professionally.

As DeVito might rightly assume, you know the rest. But to erase any conceivable doubt: he starred in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest in 1975, the hit TV show Taxi from 1978-83 and Romancing the Stone in tandem with his future limoncello-imbibing partner Michael Douglas in 1984. There was Twins, with his ‘brother’ Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 1988, his appearance as a deranged penguin in Batman Returns (1992) and a part in Look Who’s Talking Now, as the voice of a taking dog. Of course more serious work took the form of Pulp Fiction in 1994, which he helped produce and a role in Get Shorty the following year. Add to that his directing and TV roles and there are far more stellar examples than space to list them.

Fast-forward to 2012 and DeVito’s providing the lead voice for cartoon film The Lorax. And this summer there was a three-month role in The Sunshine Boys at the Savoy Theatre in London (during which period he also gave up some of his time for Drinks International). Right now DeVito is back home in Beverly Hills to direct an as-yet untitled movie, which will see filming in Hollywood and London. 

All in all, it’s difficult to see how a man normally found either side of a camera might find the time, never mind possess the skills to make a success of a fledgling limoncello brand. “I make people smile whether it’s in movies or in television or giving the best limoncello that people can taste,” says DeVito. “[The film and drinks industry are] very, very similar in that you have to have a great product in both. You have to have great promotion in a movie, as you do in the drinks industry. You have to have great people contributing to the movie, like you do with Tonino, the people who create the limoncello. Its all about offering the best product money can buy. ”

Scratch and sniff

Tonino is Antonino Scala, owner of the Fagema Distillery in Sorrento, Italy, that makes the limoncello from organic lemons, sugar and grain alcohol. The final liqueur carries an abv of 30% and has a scratch-and-sniff label to offer consumers “the full flavour before tasting the product”, says Design Foods, the US importer and agent that part-owns the brand (DeVito owns the majority). The product itself has a “sweet lemon flavour” and is suitable for serving “chilled and straight up, in a mixed drink or with a dessert”.

Chilled and straight up is, in the UK anyway, how most of us first met with limoncello. A freebie shot from the cheerful Italian waiter to reward a hearty meal of carb-crunching. So does DeVito embrace or reject this perception? “Whether it’s a freebie drink is not the question. As long as the restaurateur has my brand…” he says. He’s sounding like an old-hand already.

Having rolled out from the US to the UK this summer, orders for the brand have also come in from Australia, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg and negotiations are underway in China, Japan and New Zealand. DeVito’s limoncello is picking up pace. At least it was until August. At the time of publishing, word was that there was a delivery delay in Italy that was hampering the brand’s roll-out. Something about the Italians being on their extended August holidays. 

Welcome to the global drinks trade, Danny.