‘Goodfellas,’ ‘Field of Dreams’ star created memorable roles
Ray Liotta, who created intense, memorable characters in “Goodfellas,” “Field of Dreams” and other films as well as on television, died in a hotel in the Dominican Republic, where he was filming a movie. He was 67.
His publicist, Jennifer Allen, said Thursday that he died overnight in his sleep in the Dominican Republic, where he was shooting the film “Dangerous Waters.”
No health issues or foul play were suspected, Allen said.
Actor Robert De Niro, who co-starred with Liotta in “Goodfellas,” said in an emailed statement Thursday, “He is way too way young to have left us. May he Rest in Peace.”
Liotta was known primarily for having played Joey Perrini, a character he once called “the nicest guy in the world,” on soap opera “Another World” when he landed a different kind of role in the 1986 comic crime story “Something Wild.”
His friend Melanie Griffith leaned on the film’s director, Jonathan Demme, to consider him, and he landed the role of her character’s menacing husband, an ex-con.
“Mr. Liotta, a newcomer, nearly walks off with his sections of the film,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review in The New York Times — and suddenly he was in demand for such parts.
The most notable of those was his portrayal of gangster Henry Hill in “Goodfellas,” Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film.
Roger Ebert, in his review, wrote that “Goodfellas” solidified Liotta (and Bracco) as “two of our best new movie actors.”
The year before, Liotta had won acclaim for a quieter type of intensity when he played baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in “Field of Dreams.”
“Ray can be very still, almost like a cat,” director Howard Deutch told the Times in 1992. “He’s very powerful in his stillness. You have the sense that he’s combustible.”
The Newark, New Jersey, native was born in 1954 and adopted at six months out of an orphanage by a township clerk and an auto parts owner. Liotta always assumed he was mostly Italian — the movies did too. But later in life while searching for his birth parents, he discovered he’s Scottish. Though he grew up focused on playing sports during his senior year of high school, the drama teacher asked him if he wanted to be in a play, which he agreed to on a lark.
Whether he knew it or not at the time, it planted a seed.
Later, at the University of Miami he picked drama and acting because they had no math requirement attached.
He would often say in interviews that he only started auditioning for plays because a pretty girl told him to.
But it set him on a course.
After graduation, he got an agent and soon he got his first big break on the soap opera “Another World.”
In 2005, he won a Primetime Emmy Award for a guest role as Charlie Metcalf on NBC’s “ER.”
According to Deadline, Liotta had just finished work on the Elizabeth Banks-directed “Cocaine Bear” and was due to star in the Working Title film “The Substance” opposite Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.
Liotta is survived by his fiancée, Jacy Nittolo, and daughter Karsen.