Ray Liotta

Raymond Allen Liotta was an American actor born on December 18, 1954, in Newark, New Jersey. Abandoned at birth, he was adopted at six months of age by Mary, a township clerk, and Alfred Liotta, an auto parts store owner of Scottish and Italian American heritage. Alfred also served as a personnel director and president of a local Democratic Party club. Liotta grew up in Union, New Jersey, where he graduated from Union High School in 1973 and was later inducted into the school's Hall of Fame. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Miami in 1978, where he studied acting and performed in productions including Cabaret, Dames at Sea, Oklahoma, and The Sound of Music at the university's Jerry Herman Ring Theatre. He had an adopted sister, Linda, and later used a private detective to locate his biological mother, Ruth, who informed him he was of Scottish descent. He also had one biological sister, one biological half-brother named Ray, and five biological half-sisters.

Following his graduation, Liotta relocated to New York City, where he worked as a bartender at the Shubert Organization while securing representation within six months. He made one of his earliest professional appearances as Joey Perrini on the soap opera Another World from 1978 to 1981, then moved to Los Angeles and made his film debut in The Lonely Lady in 1983. His first major film role came in Something Wild (1986), which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1989, he portrayed the ghost of baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, and in 1990 he played real-life mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, a role that became one of the most recognized performances of his career.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Liotta built an extensive film résumé. He starred as a psychopathic police officer in Unlawful Entry (1992), appeared in Cop Land (1997), and received critical recognition for his work in Narc (2002), which brought him an Independent Spirit Award nomination and a Phoenix Film Critics Society nomination for Best Supporting Male. He played Justice Department official Paul Krendler in Hannibal (2001) and reunited with director James Mangold for Identity (2003). Additional film credits include John Q. (2002), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), and Marriage Story (2019).

On television, Liotta portrayed Frank Sinatra in the 1998 film The Rat Pack, a performance that earned him a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. He appeared in the drama series ER in 2004, playing Charlie Metcalf in the episode "Time of Death," and won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for that role in 2005. He later parodied himself and the Emmy win in the animated film Bee Movie. He starred as Lorca in the History Channel miniseries Texas Rising (2015), which brought him a second Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, and led the NBC series Shades of Blue from 2016 to 2018. His final major television role was in the Apple TV+ series Black Bird (2022), in which he played Big Jim Keene; the performance earned him a posthumous Primetime Emmy Award nomination at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards.

In 2004, Liotta made his Broadway debut in the Stephen Belber play Match, appearing opposite Frank Langella. The production marked his sole Broadway credit. That same year, he also appeared in the television drama ER, making 2004 a notable period in his career across both stage and screen.

Liotta provided the voice of Tommy Vercetti in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and narrated Inside the Mafia for the National Geographic Channel in 2005. Among his other notable film appearances were Wild Hogs (2007), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), and Kill the Messenger (2014).

Liotta died in 2022. He was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 24, 2023. Several of his films were released after his death, including Cocaine Bear, Fool's Paradise, and Dangerous Waters in 2023, and 1992 in 2024.