Home ›› 28 May 2022 ›› Show Biz
Ray Liotta, the intense actor from New Jersey best known for his turn as the hustler turned mob rat Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas, has died. He was 67, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
Publicist Jennifer Allen told The Hollywood Reporter that the actor died Wednesday night or early Thursday in his sleep in his hotel room while in the Dominican Republic making the movie Dangerous Waters. His fiancée, Jacy Nittolo, was with him. He had begun work on the film about a week ago.
Lorraine Bracco, who played his wife in GoodFellas, paid tribute to him on Twitter.
The boyish, blue-eyed Liotta also was memorable as Ray Sinclair, the violent ex-convict husband of Melanie Griffith’s character, in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild (1986); as the disgraced Chicago White Sox baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in the Kevin Costner starrer Field of Dreams (1989); and as the corrupt cop Matt Wozniak on the 2016-18 NBC cop drama Shades of Blue, opposite Jennifer Lopez.
He starred alongside Taron Egerton on the upcoming Apple TV series Black Bird and, according to IMDb, worked on the still-to-be-released movies Cocaine Bear; The Substance; April 29, 1992; and an untitled Charlie Day-directed film.
GoodFellas (1990) was based on Nicholas Pileggi’s first book, 1985’s Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, which revolved around Hill, a street-level hustler in New York City who decides that the only way to get out of the mob alive is to snitch on his cohorts in the Lucchese crime family.
Liotta’s résumé included the films Dominick and Eugene (1988), Phoenix (1998), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Heartbreakers (2001), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Revolver (2005), Smokin’ Aces (2006), Observe and Report (2009), Powder Blue (2009), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Muppets Most Wanted (2014) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014).
He won an Emmy Award in 2005 for his guest turn as an alcoholic ex-con who comes to County General on the NBC drama ER — an episode that was shot in real time — then spoofed that performance in Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Bee Movie’ (2007).
Raymond Allen Liotta was born in Newark on Dec. 18, 1954. He was adopted by Mary and Alfred Liotta, an auto parts retailer, from an orphanage when he was six months old.
Liotta came to Los Angeles and made his film debut as a rapist in 1983’s ‘The Lonely Lady’, starring Pia Zadora, then portrayed a cop in his first primetime series, ABC’s Our Family Honor, in 1985. Three years later, he played Frank Sinatra in the HBO telefilm ‘The Rat Pack’.
