Ray Liotta

Raymond Allen Liotta (December 18, 1954 - May 26, 2022) was an American actor and movie producer. He was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He was adopted when he was six months old. His movie roles include: Ray Sinclair in Something Wild, Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, Henry Hill in Goodfellas, Officer Pete Davis in Unlawful Entry and Detective Lieutenant Henry Oak in Narc. He won an Emmy Award for his role in ER. He is best known for playing villains and tough guys. He has also played sympathetic characters.
Career
One of Liotta's earliest roles was as Joey Perrini on the soap opera Another World. He appeared on the show from 1978 to 1981. In his first movie his character sexually assaulted Pia Zadora's character with a garden hose in the cult classic The Lonely Lady. In 1987, he earned his first Golden Globe nomination for Something Wild. In 1989, he costarred, along with Kevin Costner, in the fantasy/drama movie, Field of Dreams. Liotta was Shoeless Joe Jackson, the ghost of the famed baseball player. In 1990, Liotta was real-life mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's movie Goodfellas. In 1992, he costarred, along with Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe, in the thriller Unlawful Entry as a psychopathic cop. He also had a leading role in Sci-Fi/Action movie No Escape. Liotta earned more praise for James Mangold's movie Cop Land, starring alongside Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel. In 1998, he received praise the crime movie Phoenix.
In addition to his movie roles, Liotta was singer Frank Sinatra in the 1998 TV movie The Rat Pack. He received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for this role. He provided the voice of Tommy Vercetti for the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He received an Independent Spirit Award nomination and a Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards nomination for Best Supporting Male for the movie Narc. He then reunited with director James Mangold in 2003 alongside John Cusack and Alfred Molina in the dark horror-thriller Identity. He also narrated Inside the Mafia for the National Geographic Channel in 2005. He appeared with John Travolta in the movie Wild Hogs and with Johnny Depp in the 2001 movie Blow.
In 2011, he starred in The Son of No One, opposite Channing Tatum and Al Pacino. Liotta's recent movies include Date Night with Steve Carell, Charlie St. Cloud with Zac Efron, the independent drama Snowmen, and The River Sorrow, which stars Liotta as a detective alongside Christian Slater and Ving Rhames.
Personal life
Liotta married actress Michelle Grace in February 1997. Their daughter, Karsen, was born in December 1998. The couple divorced in 2004. Liotta lived in Pacific Palisades, California.
Liotta died on May 26, 2022 while filming a movie in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic at the age of 67. The cause of death was heart failure and pulmonary edema.
References
Other websites
Actors from Newark, New Jersey
American adoptees
American movie actors
American television actors
American voice actors
Emmy Award winning actors
Movie producers from New Jersey
Businesspeople from Newark, New Jersey
1954 births
2022 deaths
Deaths from heart failure
Deaths from pulmonary edema