Saturday, December 10th | 2 Movies
“The eye is the window to the soul.”
And that was certainly the case with Ray Liotta. His intense blue eyes were one of the secrets to his success as an actor. Case in point: the climactic showdown in Jonathan Demme’s 1986 classic Something Wild where vicious ex-con Ray (Liotta) attempts to kill his wife Audrey (Melanie Griffith) and yuppie investment banker Charlie (Jeff Daniels). But the fight to the death doesn’t go the way Ray planned.
“Sh-t Charlie,” Ray exclaims as suddenly his soulless eyes transform. There is a sweetness and innocence in those eyes-his soul has returned. He’s no longer a terrifying psychopath, but a little boy who has been betrayed. Liotta makes the audiences feel sorry for Ray.
I encountered those eyes in 1988 when I interviewed Liotta for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Liotta had his first starring role in Dominick and Eugene (1988), a sentimental weepie about the complex relationship between two brothers. I was nervous fearing I would be meeting a version of Ray. But Liotta’s eyes were sweet and kind with a touch of sadness. He was soft-spoken and cute. After the interview was over, he walked me to my car. It was hard to believe that this was the same person who played Ray in Something Wild.
It was certainly hard to believe when it was announced on May 26 that he had died at the age of 67 during his sleep while on location in the Dominican Republic on a movie. In fact, it felt like a punch to the gut. During his four-decade career, Liotta had given so many memorable performances including as Shoeless Joe Jackson in the 1989 baseball classic Field of Dreams; mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s masterwork Goodfellas (1990) where he more than held his own opposite Oscar-winners Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci; and has a conflicted policeman who decides to do the right thing in James Mangold’s Cop Land from 1997.
He also held his own opposite Miss Piggy as a goofy security guard in 1999’s Muppets from Space.
Liotta’s career had a lot of ups and downs. Many of his movies weren’t worthy of his enormous and unique talents. And he was far too intense in his series of commercials for Chantix, so much so there’s a wonderful parody on YouTube.
TCM is paying tribute to the influential actor on Dec. 10 with a double feature of the rarely seen Dominick and Eugene, as well as Something Wild.
Liotta had kicked around a lot before Demme cast him in Something Wild. The Newark, New Jersey native was raised by his adoptive parents in working class Union. He fell into acting in sixth grade when he was asked to take over a role in a school play when a classmate took ill. He joined a drama class in high school and honed his acting skills at the University of Miami.
Liotta quickly got a gig when he moved to New York in 1978 being a pitchman on TV for K-Tel Records’ “Love Songs of the ‘50s”. Liotta did the bartender bit working at the Shubert Theater on Broadway that same year. He also landed the role of Joey Perrini, whom Liotta described as “the nicest guy in the world” on the daytime drama “Another World.” After three years, he headed west to Hollywood where he languished for several years. He landed a small role in the 1983 Pia Zadora turkey The Lonely Lady, as well as small roles in two short-lived series: NBC’s “Casablanca” from 1983, in which he played a bartender named Sacha, and ABC’s 1985-86 “Our Family Honor” as a cop.
And then came Something Wild, a truly gonzo thrill ride that is a fun romantic comedy for the first 50 minutes and then a psycho-thriller for the last hour when Liotta’s Ray enters the picture. It was Griffith who encouraged Demme to see him for the role. Demme would later say that Liotta was so scary in the audition he “had to cast him.”
Liotta received a Golden Globe nomination and won the Boston Society of Film Critics honor for his work.
Wisely, he didn’t play another psychopath in his next film Dominick and Eugene. Directed by Robert M. Young, the drama revolves around adult twin brothers living in Pittsburgh. Dominick, aka Nicky, (Tom Hulce) has an intellectual disability; Eugene, aka Gino (Liotta) is an ambitious medical student who lives with and takes care of Nicky. And it is Nicky’s job as a garbage collector that pays for Nicky’s medical school. When Gino is given an offer to complete his studies at Stanford University, he realizes his brother may not be able to take care of himself.
Though the film wasn’t a hit, reviews were generally strong with the New York Times’ Janet Maslin praising Liotta’s ability to go from playing such a horrific villain in Something Wild to portraying “a touchingly devoted figure, a man willing to sacrifice almost anything for his brother’s welfare. His frustration at realizing that he can’t protect Nicky from life’s every problem is something Mr. Liotta makes very moving.”
He's also very moving in the small but telling role of disgraced Chicago White Sox baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1989’s beloved Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner. He and other baseball ghosts magically find themselves playing ball once again in a field built by an Iowa farmer in his backyard.
Because he hadn’t played baseball since high school, Liotta spent several months honing the sport with a USC baseball coach. Liotta admitted he had never seen the film all the way through. “My mom was really sick during that period, so it brings things back,” he told the Huffington Post. Last year while appearing on “The Rich Eisen Show” Liotta noted that he tried to watch the film with his sick mother but “she couldn’t enjoy herself, so we left. I just equate it with that.”
But it was Goodfellas that made him a real star. He was the anchor of Scorsese’s gangster epic chronicling the rise and fall of a young man, Henry Hill, when he gets involved with the Italian mafia in New Jersey and ends up informing on his mentors and friends.
Reportedly, Val Kilmer, Nicolas Cage, Alec Baldwin and even Tom Cruise were considered for the role of Henry. Though Scorsese wanted Liotta, producer Irwin Winkler though he was too intense for the role because of Something Wild. But after the actor was able to show off his charming personae, Winkler was on board.
Scorsese told Rolling Stone after Liotta’s death that he wishes he had the chance to work with him one more time especially after seeing him play a shark of a divorce attorney in 2019’s Marriage Story.
“He was genuinely scary in the role, which is precisely why he’s so funny-I remember feeling that I wanted to work with him again at this point in his life, to explore the gravity in his presence, so different from the young, sprightly actor he was when I met him,” the filmmaker
noted.
Scorsese was duly impressed with his work in Something Wild, but it was his demeanor at the Venice Film Festival that convinced him Liotta would be the perfect Henry Hill.
The two had seen each other at a hotel in Venice, but Liotta was stopped from approaching Scorsese by security. “Instead of throwing a fit and demanding that he be allowed through, he reacted quietly and calmly, observed the rules and patiently defused the situation,” Scorsese recalled.
“He looked at me, I looked at him, and we signaled that we would talk, and he walked away. I watched it all very closely, and I saw him handle the situation with quiet authority and a real elegance. Actually, that was what the role needed.”
But two of his greatest performances were on the small screen. Liotta, then 50, won an Emmy Award for his extraordinary turn in 2004 as Charlie on NBC’s “ER.” Again, his “eyes” have it playing a man who has 45 minutes to live. Charlie, an alcoholic ex-con who has internal bleeding because of his drinking, endures every emotion from anger to coming to terms he’ll soon be dead, telegraphing all his feelings through those expressive eyes -little wonder there are so many close-ups of his eyes. The performance is even more poignant now because of Liotta’s death. Just have a box of Kleenex in the ready.
Less than two months after his death, Apple TV + premiered its acclaimed limited series “Black Bird” featuring Liotta as the ex-policeman father of a young man (Taren Egerton) dealing in narcotics who is arrested and sent to prison.
With gray hair and weathered countenance, Liotta’s eyes illuminate his love and disappointment in his son-and himself. Vulture wrote: “From the moment he’s introduced in the series talking to Egerton’s Keene through a glass pane that visually divides their face into half-slices of generational pain, Liotta embodies the series’ sense of opportunities lost”
The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg noted: “’Black Bird’ gains tremendous amount of gravity from one of Liotta’s last screen appearances. Liotta’s death brings additional poignancy to a character who, through failing health and visits to his incarcerated son, is dealing with his own mortality and legacy.”
Why did Liotta love to act so much?
“It’s always about the work,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2015. “I enjoy the job. I love playing pretend. I’ve worked with some great directors and actors, and one of the basic things they have in common is this love of playing pretend. There’s an electric energy, and it’s so much fun to be around people who find that joy.”
