Editor's note: This is the second in an occasional series looking at where celebrities grew up at the Jersey Shore.

Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito. Both actors, both winners of multiple awards. The two major film stars also have something else in common: both grew up at the Jersey Shore.

The 73-year-old DeVito grew up on Second Avenue in Asbury Park, and attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in the city. He famously asked his parents to send him away to Oratory Prepatory School, a boarding school in Summit, when he was 14.

Why? DeVito was afraid he and his grammar school pals were getting into way too much trouble in the city by the sea.

Nicholson, now 81, spent his childhood in two different homes, in Neptune and Neptune City.

Danny DeVito returns to Asbury Park:Danny DeVito gets a hero's welcome in Asbury Park

A 1954 graduate of Manasquan High School, Nicholson acted in numerous school productions. A 1953 article in The Asbury Park Press noted that the teenage Nicholson was listed as "best actor," "chatterbox," and, ironically, both "class pessimist" and "class optimist in a poll of seniors taken by Manasquan High School's Blue and Gray newspaper.

Check out the homes were the two actors grew up:

Danny DeVito, Asbury Park

DeVito's family lived in this home on a quiet street on the west side of Main Street. His father, who was originally from Brooklyn, operated Danny's Luncheonette on Springwood Avenue until the late 1960s. His mother, an Asbury Park native, ran a small dry-cleaning shop.

Their son was born at Fitkin Hospital (now Jersey Shore University Medical Center) in Neptune in 1944.

Bruce Springsteen childhood homes:Bruce Springsteen childhood homes: See where The Boss grew up in NJ

In a 1997 interview published in the Asbury Park Press, DeVito reminisced about growing up in the city in the 1950s. DeVito's parents, Danny Sr. and Julia, met at a Mardi Gras celebration in the city.

"It was really a great town - a beautiful jewel on the Eastern Seaboard," DeVito told the Los Angeles Times' Robert Welkos. "At least it was when I was growing up...It was a Shore resort. Summers were filled with people from the city."

Springsteen at Sea. Hear. Now:Bruce Springsteen surprise at Sea.Hear.Now fest: Boss on the Asbury Park beach

DeVito's first job was on Asbury Park's boardwalk, where he worked putting smaller kids on rides. He was 14. He frequented the city's many movie palaces, including the St. James, Lyric and the Mayfair.

"And then in the winter, it was like a Bergmann movie," DeVito said. "Beautiful seashore. Waves. Empty parking meters for miles. Nobody down there."

DeVito's affection for his hometown has never faded. After attending Oratory Prep and briefly training to be a hairdresser, DeVito enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduating in 1966.

He at first acted in the theater and in 1975, played Martini in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," reprising an off-Broadway theater role. He rose to fame in 1978 by playing domineering dispatcher Louie DePalma in the hit TV series, "Taxi."

DeVito had established a successful film career that included roles in "Terms of Endearment," "Romancing the Stone," "The Jewel of the Nile" and "Ruthless People," when he returned to Asbury Park in 1987.

Celebrities from NJ:Peter Dinklage, 10 celebrities you didn't know were from NJ

He debuted the movie, "Throw Momma From the Train," which he directed, and also co-starred in, at the city's Paramount Theatre. The idea for the star-studded premiere came from then Asbury Mayor Frank C. Fiorentino; the Fiorentino and DeVito families had been close since Danny was a child.

The film screening gave a boost to the struggling city, which was in the midst of a decades-long slide.

When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band debuted "The Rising" album with a live broadcast on the Today Show in July 2002, DeVito was on the scene, wearing an Asbury Park High School t-shirt.

NJ Hall of Fame:NJ Hall of Fame inductees celebrate in Asbury Park

DeVito, currently starring on the hit comedy series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," has earned generations of fans thanks to his work in everything from the TV classic "Taxi" to films including "Romancing the Stone" (1984), "Twins" (1988) and "Batman Returns" (1992).

As a director, DeVito has crafted the likes of "Throw Momma From the Train" (1987), "Matilda" (1996) and "Death to Smoochy" (2002), and he was a producer behind "Pulp Fiction" (1994), "Erin Brokovich" (2000) and "Garden State" (2004).

At last year's Asbury Park Music & Film Festival, DeVito appeared at the Paramount Theatre for a wide-ranging discussion of his career, moderated by Asbury Park Press' Staff Writer Alex Biese. The city had declared it "Danny DeVito Day" in Asbury.

Growing up in the city gave him freedom, DeVito said.

NJ celebrities' birthdays:New Jersey celebrities: Which ones share your birthday?

"I’d get on my bike and get on Second Avenue and just ride, without any kind of inhibitions, get down to that beach put that bike in a rack,and jump over the railing, let the guard chase you, and just jump in. It's kind of a freeing kind of thing, that’s kind of what the boardwalk was for me in Asbury Park," DeVito said.

One of his best boyhood pals, the singer Nicky Addeo, joined him onstage at the Paramount, and the two performed "Over a Cup of Coffee," a 1954 single by The Castelles. It's a song DeVito said stayed in his memory after a romance that ended in heartbreak when he was young.

Watch DeVito talk about Asbury Park in the video above this story.

Jack Nicholson, Neptune

Few actors in motion-picture history are as accomplished as Nicholson. He's been nominated for 12 Academy Awards, the most in Oscar history, winning Best Actor for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "As Good as It Gets," and Best Supporting Actor for "Terms of Endearment."

Known as "Nick" to his high school friends at Manasquan High, Nicholson was raised thinking his maternal grandmother, Ethel May, was actually his mother, and his mother, June, was his sister. He remains unsure who his father was.

Which celebrities are from your town?:Which celebrities are from your Jersey Shore town?

June was 18 and unmarried when she gave birth to Nicholson in Neptune, most likely in New York, in 1937, according to biographer Patrick McGilligan. To protect her daughter's reputation, May claimed to be Nicholson's mother.

Known as "Mud," May had a beauty parlor on one side of the Steiner Avenue house, according to a 1978 Asbury Park Press interview with John R. O'Brien, a funeral home owner and one of Nicholson's best childhood friends.

Middletown celebrities:Celebrities from the Jersey Shore: Middletown

"Saturday was our big day," O'Brien told the Press. "As soon as we got up on Saturday morning we would we would go out and look for old soda and beer bottles. Then we'd go cash them in for their deposits and head to the Palace Theatre in Bradley Beach (now Beach Cinema, on Main Street)."

A Saturday matinee cost 9 cents, O'Brien said.

The first evening movie the two ever saw?

"It was Going My Way with Bing Crosby and it played at the Palace either in 1944 or 1945," O'Brien recalled. "We had to pay 25 cents to get in and we thought we'd been robbed."

He left the Shore soon after graduating in 1954, and headed straight for Los Angeles, where he took acting classes.

But success didn't come quickly: Nicholson had appeared in more than 20 low-budget films before he vaulted to stardom when playing an uptight ACLU lawyer in the counterculture road movie, "Easy Rider," alongside Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.

In addition to living in homes in Neptune and Neptune City, Nicholson also spent parts of his formative years in Manasquan and Spring Lake.

Point Pleasant celebrities:Celebrities from the Jersey Shore: Point Pleasant

Nicholson's name appears in a 1951 Asbury Park Press article that lists boys and girls who had participated in a "Young Couples of the Shore Dance Group" for "social dancing." The kids, seventh- and eighth-graders, danced the night away at a Christmas party held at the Starlight Roof of the Hotel Kingsley Arms in Asbury Park.

Hosting their parents, the kids demonstrated their dance moves, showing off "foxtrot, rumba techniques and several novelty steps, such as the Mexican Hop and the Texas Polka."

Before he went to Manasquan High School, Nicholson attended Neptune City's Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School, located at Third and Steiner avenues. The school was demolished in 1979.

When he was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, Nicholson praised his home state, according to an article in NJ Monthly.

"I could sing the praises of New Jersey all night. I could say the light bulb always touches you...You are never…far from New Jersey! Never."

Jean Mikle: 732-643-4050, @jeanmikle, jmikle@gannettnj.com