Ray Liotta: Biography

Actor Ray Liotta's intense demeanor and fondness for edgy roles has seemingly prevented him from becoming an A-list Hollywood leading man, but it also helped him become one of the most interesting and respected character players in the business. Liotta was born in Newark, NJ, on December 18, 1955, and, at the age of six months, was adopted by Alfred and Mary Liotta. (His adopted sister Linda joined the family three years later.) As a teenager, Liotta was a gifted athlete and played basketball and soccer in high school when not busy working in his father's auto supply shop. After graduation, he left home to attend the University of Miami, where he developed an interest in acting and eventually majored in Drama. Liotta appeared in a number of student productions during his college days, including a surprising number of musicals, including Cabaret and The Sound of Music. Within a year of graduating, Liotta scored a regular role on the soap opera Another World, where he played Joey Perrini from 1978 to 1981; he was also a regular on several short-lived prime-time TV series, including Crazy Times (with David Caruso and Amy Madigan) and Casablanca (featuring David Soul in the role Humphrey Bogart made famous).

Liotta's first film role came in the 1983 Pia Zadora vehicle The Lonely Lady, but his real breakthrough came in 1986, when Jonathan Demme cast him as the psychotic Ray Sinclair in the comedy-drama Something Wild. Liotta's well-received performance won him a number of job offers playing over-the-top villains, but, determined not to be typecast, Liotta turned them down, instead appearing in Dominick and Eugene and Field of Dreams (in which he played the legendary "Shoeless" Joe Jackson). Liotta's determination to wait for the right role paid off in 1990, when he was cast as mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's masterful crime drama GoodFellas. However, while the success of GoodFellas raised Liotta's profile considerably, he held on to his determination to wait for the right part. While he still found himself playing tough and/or scary guys in the likes of Unlawful Entry and No Escape, in Corrina, Corrina he proved he could play a romantic lead, and he dipped his toes into family fare for Operation Dumbo Drop and Muppets From Space. After a productive 2001, in which Liotta appeared in the major hits Blow, Hannibal, and Heartbreakers, the actor formed his own production company in order to give him a greater diversity of roles and more interesting material; the first feature produced by Liotta was the critically acclaimed Narc, in which he played an obsessed police detective. ~ All Movie Guide