He was a “GoodFella.”
The Union, New Jersey-raised actor was filming Dangerous Waters in the Dominican Republic when he passed away in his sleep at the age of 67 on Friday, May 27. Liotta is survived by his daughter Karsen, fiancé Jacy Nittolo, ex-wife Michelle Grace, and no shortage of fans and former collaborators in deep mourning.
“I am utterly shattered to hear this terrible news about my Ray,” tweeted Lorraine Bracco, who won an Oscar for playing Liotta’s on-screen wife, Karen, in GoodFellas (1990). “I can be anywhere in the world and people will come up and tell me their favorite movie is Goodfellas. Then they always ask what was the best part of making that movie. My response has always been the same… Ray Liotta.”
Tabbed in his early-30s to headline a gargantuan ensemble also featuring genre stalwarts Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci on the gangster classic ticket, Liotta became an instant legend in the eyes of tristate lifers whose daydreams and night terrors alike are painted with a Scorsesian brush.
Having co-starred in the soap opera Another World from 1978 to 1981 before breaking out with Something Wild (1986), Liotta could have retired a made man when GoodFellas danced circles around a same year-released mob mammoth with “The Godfather” in its title. However, perhaps the best performative weapon in his arsenal: responding to seeing behind the leading man curtain with thirty uninterrupted years of exemplary name-brand character acting.
The adoptive son of Italian and Scottish descenders, Liotta’s early knowledge of his abandonment by way of orphanage drop-off prepared him for a life of morphing into battle worn students from the school of over-compensatory machismo. Take his most known roles – Field of Dreams’ (1989) historically-fictionalized ghost of disgraced “dead ball” era ballplayer, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson; and GoodFellas’ half-Irish, half-Italian, fully strung-out Henry Hill the next year.
In Liotta, Field of Dreams personifies its cornfield-calling Greek chorus with the smooth-voiced, pale blue-eyed wonder under a redemptive moonlight. At the time, the record books remembered him by removing him, Jackson rendered a cheat due to the “Black Sox” scandal that supposed his Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. But, per Liotta’s graceful interpretation, audiences are tearfully lifted out of cynicism – and implored to decide for themselves whether “the game” or those that play and live it should decide who’s leperized out of the lineup.
“While he leaves an incredible legacy, he’ll always be ‘Shoeless Joe Jackson’ in my heart. What happened that moment in the film was real. God gave us that stunt. Now God has Ray,” wrote Liotta’s Field of Dreams co-star, Kevin Costner, who Liotta memorably sent screaming onto his behind thanks to a 1.000 batting average on hanging curves.
On GoodFellas, Scorsese fostered out of Liotta voice-over and fourth wall-whacking narration sent from the tracking-shot heavens; charm to last a lifetime that surely has, and will continue to. Though the pair curiously never worked together on another project, the director told Vanity Fair this weekend: “he was so uniquely gifted, so adventurous, so courageous as an actor. Playing Henry Hill in GoodFellas was a tall order, because the character had so many different facets, so many complicated layers, and Ray was in almost every scene of a long, tough shoot. He absolutely amazed me, and I’ll always be proud of the work we did together on that picture.”
After the “Layla” denouement fade out on GoodFellas’ initial press tour, Liotta stuck around doing what he did best: playing shady cops, lovable criminals and the reverse to further demonstrate his own duality: as sinister on screen as he was universally adored off of it. Cop Land, Hannibal, John Q, Narc, Smokin’ Aces, and Killing Them Softly are just a few of his impressive next turns – with the latter film especially lending Liotta the chance to take the heat for a change. What transpires: the supreme example of how to act out getting beaten up in the 21st century.
While he famously turned down the lead role in The Sopranos, Liotta would eventually make a respectable impact on the TV medium with an Emmy Award-winning 2004 guest spot on ER, and opposite Jennifer Lopez on Shades of Blue from 2016-2018. Following an Oscar-snubbed supporting performance as a comically aggressive divorce attorney to Adam Driver’s Marriage Story (2019) lead, Liotta finally got himself not one, but two guns in The Sopranos universe. He played volatile, rough-sounding “Hollywood” Dick Moltisanti and his prison-rehabilitated, soothsaying twin brother “Sally,” the Dr. Melfian moral compass to Dickie Moltisanti in 2021’s The Many Saints of Newark.
Said Alessandro Nivola, who played Dickie, on Instagram, “I was lucky enough to have squared off against this legend in one of his final roles. The scenes we did together were among the all-time highlights of my life as an actor because he was so exciting to act with. He was dangerous, unpredictable, hilarious, and generous with his praise for other actors. He was in the middle of a career renaissance and I’m sad to think of all the performances we could have been treated to in the coming years.”
One such upcoming film Liotta already filmed, but will be billed in posthumously: the pitch perfectly-titled Cocaine Bear, directed by Pitch Perfect actress Elizabeth Banks.
“I had a special bond with Ray Liotta,” she revealed on Instagram. “I always admired his acting but I genuinely enjoyed him as a human. He was a charmer. We have been collaborating on Cocaine Bear these past few months. I just saw him, hugged him, heard about his summer travel plans. When any actor of Ray’s caliber puts trust in you as a director, it’s a gift. But Ray gave me so much more. I had been told in the past by Hollywood producers that men wouldn’t follow me, that I couldn’t direct action because of that. Ray’s respect for me as a director, actress and artist, as his boss on set, meant everything to me.”
The outpouring is a tacit reminder: praise remarkable humans while they are still living. By all accounts, though Liotta was deservedly bombarded with declarations of grandeur from GoodFellas-quoting fanboys, he never quite appreciated how talented he was – and what his body of work meant to many generations.
“Ray Liotta was an unbreakable actor who never seemed embarrassed or afraid to try something different than the status quo. He was a huge influence on me,” said Calogero Carucci, 26, an independent filmmaker and Smithtown native. “From his launching performance in Demme’s Something Wild to his popular force in Goodfellas to his nuanced gravitas in The Place Beyond the Pines, I always felt like I was in the hands of a master when watching him on the screen.”
Crooked Book of Henry believers grew up feeling safer when thrust into “strangers in a strange land” situations because Liotta’s “Rat Pack” calm through good times and helicopter paranoia through the bad keeps them honest in ways his characters couldn’t be. His most iconic role also regularly inspires audiences to keep their priorities ever in order.
Never rat on your friends, and always watch GoodFellas until the end credits when it’s on TV; then take it from the top via DVD or HBO Max to be reminded what Henry and Liotta both wanted to be for as far back as they could each remember.
