Dhe American question of confidence “Would you buy a used car from this man?” could never be clarified beyond doubt in his case. He would have plunged potential buyers into a roller coaster of reactions. They could have ranged from a firm “No!” (too dubious) to a “Maybe” (he seemed to understand the American drive for success, after all) to a “Why not?” (his charm could be diabolical).
Ray Liotta, who died on Thursday at the age of 67, felt the inscrutability like a second skin. He elevated the depiction of psychopaths and sociopaths to a fine art. Anything was to be expected with him. Something Wild, the original title of Dangerous Girlfriend, with which he made his breakthrough in 1986, was a promise he tirelessly kept. In the role of Melanie Griffith’s stubborn ex-husband, his compelling on-screen authority was already fully developed.
However, he also had a face like no other, with blue eyes that could be both piercing and watery at the same time, with boyish features roughened by pockmarks, with pinched corners of the mouth and a shock of hair that seemed to be made of iron wires. It wasn’t just his unpredictable violent nature that was dangerous. He seemed threatening because he could get very close to his counterpart. He read him like an open book, divined hidden desires and fears: an artist of challenge by virtue of experience and imagination. Liotta and his director Jonathan Demme understood that the big screen villains should enjoy their own wickedness.
Being Henry Hill
The actor retained this self-assured vigor for more than three and a half decades. The depravity of his characters was storm tested. Of course, they could also be stupid, as in the brilliant George V Higgins film adaptation Killing Them Softly. But as a rule, they did not only have a reptilian mind, which worked excellently. Her feeling for the dark side of her opponents had almost clairvoyant dimensions. As a gangster or an unscrupulously corrupt cop, Liotta portrayed an inexorable fate that could often only be shaken off in the final shot.
The Goodfellas: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino and Joe Pesci (left)
Quelle: Getty Images
That screen persona was both shattered and validated by the role that made him a star in 1990. As up-and-coming mafioso Henry Hill, he embodied the bloody flip side of America’s promise of happiness in “Goodfellas”. As a professional criminal, he fulfilled a self-evident childhood dream, the world was his oyster, which he would break open and savor at any price.
Martin Scorsese’s staging, the majestic tracking shots and lightning-fast cuts, seemed entirely attuned to Liotta’s charisma. This full-blooded actor didn’t have to fear a moment of interaction with greats like Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Paul Sorvino. Vanity and overconfidence in his character were Liotta’s Achilles’ heels, which he led to tragic consequences.
From Shoeless Joe to Sinatra
It was fitting for the actor, who was born in Newark in 1954, that he was a foundling. Even more fitting for him, he later hired a private investigator to find his father. His characters were lost, single-minded, and undeterred. After Godfellas, he could have continued playing gangsters until the end of his career, but wasting his diversity was out of the question.
He already proved this in 1989 in “Field of Dreams”, where he embodied the spirit of baseball legend “Shoeless” Joe Jackson alongside Kevin Costner. Here he delivered the immensely compelling portrait of a tainted American myth: Jackson had admitted to being bribed during the 1919 World Series, but Liotta tricked him into wistful sincerity.
Also a star role: Ray Liotta with Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro in “Copland”
Quelle: NY Daily News via Getty Images
In light comedies he was henceforth a welcome background noise. He drew a suitably complex portrait of Frank Sinatra in the 1998 TV movie The Rat Pack. As the incorrigibly romantic victim of marriage swindler Sigourney Weaver in 2001’s “Heartbreakers,” he unleashed a naivety that no one would have credited with. He was never able to repeat the success of Goodfellas, but he remained a reliable sentiment in genre cinema and excelled in ensemble plays.
He ended up in shallow TV series, where he did well. In this millennium one would have wished him better, more imaginative directors and screenwriters. In 2019’s “Marriage Story” he put his career as a merciless divorce lawyer to a late highlight. Noah Baumbach stages the duels he fought in court with his opponent Laura Dern as a dogged pit bull fighting a cunning gazelle.
Liotta understood the obscenity of this character, a know-it-all salesman whose cunning was worth every penny of the $800 an hour he was making. For a fraction of a second, a touch of conscience flashed in his eyes, until the end a herald of imponderability. Now he has died in a way that is not fitting for a gangster: in his sleep.