In “Goodfellas” he served punches, from Hannibal Lecter he had his own frontal lobe fed. Now the expressive American actor has died at the age of 67.
The actor Ray Liotta in a picture taken a few days ago.
Freaks were his specialty. He was excellent at playing men who lose their heads. In his best-known role as aspiring gangster Henry Hill in Goodfellas, he bludgeons the man who was molesting his girlfriend with the butt of his pistol is a classic Ray Liotta moment. However, the scene that left the most lasting impression from his almost 40-year career is one in which the American actor does not act headless in the figurative sense.
“What’s for the main course?” he asks at the table, his tired eyes looking up at Anthony Hopkins. He stands aside and melts the fat in the frying pan. It’s a surprise, says Hopkins, that in said film, of course, Dr. His name is Hannibal Lecter and shortly thereafter he, Paul Krendler, official of the Department of Justice, lifts the already opened skullcap from his head. Then he cuts a piece of the prefrontal lobe out of his victim’s brain, which is fried à la minute. “Smells great,” says Paul before he’s served the bite-sized meat. “Yes, it’s fine,” he confirms the next moment and chews contentedly on his own cerebral cortex.
He wanted to be a construction worker
A scene that couldn’t be more grotesque, Liotta played it to perfection. With a good dose of nonchalance. This distinguished him. He was an actor who approached his roles intuitively; the man with the piercing eyes trusted his presence. He wasn’t one of those who made a big deal about the art of acting. Read the script, recite lines: That’s how he liked to summarize his approach. He hadn’t even thought about a career in acting for a long time. He only attended the acting course at the university because he wasn’t bothered with mathematics there. And he only dragged himself into auditioning for his first roles after being pressured by a girl he liked. “To be honest,” he said in an interview with The Guardian, “I assumed I was working in construction.”
Raymond Allen Liotta was born in 1954 in Newark, New Jersey. Dropped off on the steps of an orphanage as a baby, he was adopted by a Scottish-Italian couple when he was six months old. He made his TV debut in his mid-twenties on a soap opera called Another World. Liotta found his first major film role in 1986 in the abysmal comedy “Something Wild” by Jonathan Demme, alongside Melanie Griffith he played her disturbed ex-boyfriend.
He also passed against Brad Pitt
The real breakthrough came with roles in “Field of Dreams” (1989) and “Goodfellas” (1990). In the first film, the beautiful Kevin Costner fairy tale about a magical baseball field, he embodied the ghost of the player “Shoeless Joe” Jackson; Above all, however, he proved himself with Martin Scorsese in the mafia field: He was cast with a preference for taciturn criminals such as mobster Henry Hill.
In the years that followed, he perfected his role as an “elder statesman” in the thriller genre. Or then he played Brad Pitt against the wall in scenes in “Killing Them Softly” (2012). He also attracted attention last year in the “Sopranos” prequel “The Many Saints of Newark”. Most recently, Liotta was busy filming the film “Dangerous Waters” in the Dominican Republic. According to information from his agent, the charismatic actor died there in his sleep at the age of 67. The cause of death is not known.