Ray Liotta, a reliable tough guy who found success playing conflicted characters, villains and more, and brought humanity to all of them, has died. He was 67.
Born Raymond Allen Liotta on December 18, 1954, in Newark, New Jersey, Liotta was adopted by Alfred and Mary Liotta when he was just a few months old. The young Liotta was a talented athlete, playing both basketball and football in high school.
Liotta attended the University of Miami, where he studied acting. He moved to New York after college and was soon spotted by a casting agent. TV advertising parts followed, until he scored a job playing Joey Perrini on the daytime drama Another World, appearing between 1978 and 1981.
After moving to California to try his luck in Hollywood, Liotta spent years struggling to find work. He landed a breakthrough role when he was cast as Melanie Griffith's crazed ex-con husband in 1985's Something Wild. The portrayal won him critical and popular acclaim, but Liotta showed his versatility playing a medical student caring for his mentally challenged brother in 1988's Dominick And Eugene. After that came one of his best turns, as baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson opposite Kevin Costner in Field Of Dreams.
Yet it was portraying real-life gangster Henry Hill that gave Liotta his most memorable role. Directed by Martin Scorsese, Goodfellas is the actor's crowning achievement, bringing nuance and charm to the role. Sharing the screen with the likes of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, Liotta shone, though was maddeningly not nominated for an Oscar alongside his co-stars.
In his varied, long career, Liotta proved to be a versatile character actor, able to be funny and dangerous and appearing in the big screen likes of No Escape, Corrina, Corrina, Cop Land, Hannibal, Narc, Observe And Report, Date Night, The Iceman, The Place Beyond The Pines, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, The Many Saints Of Newark and Marriage Story. Still to be released is Elizabeth Banks' based-on-truth Cocaine Bear, due out next year.
His TV work included cop drama Shades Of Blue, Hanna, ER, St. Elsewhere and Modern Family, and he'll be seen opposite Taron Egerton in Apple TV's upcoming Black Bird.
Liotta was in the Dominican Republic, where he was shooting new thriller Dangerous Waters, and reportedly died in his sleep.
The actor is survived by his daughter, Karsen. Before his death, he was engaged to be married to Jacy Nittolo.