Ray Liotta's BIO His role as Henry Hill in 'GoodFellas' (1990)
December 18, 1955 (Newark, New Jersey, USA)
Ray Liotta's quotes |
|
I think people like watching edgy things.
You don't do anything thinking that it's going to stick.
Then I got Blow, Heartbreakers, and Hannibal so I knew I was protected. I was getting low on the lists, and those films helped.
Not like Chinese food, where you eat it and then you feel hungry an hour later.
So, you need to balance it out with bigger and smaller movies.
Suddenly playing the charming bad guy was my thing.
The main reason I didn't want to do it was that it was just too intimidating - I'm not a mimic, the only thing I have in common with Sinatra is that we're both from Jersey, y'know, I don't look like him, I don't sound like him.
You know, it was a small, independent movie and with Paramount becoming involved, it was obviously a good thing, but you can't put a round peg in a square hole.
I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth.
When I read Copland, I really wanted Stallone's part.
I think drug movies free the director to make intense films.
Some movies you go to and you spend a lot of money between popcorn, parking, or the movie itself, and I really feel that this is worth its money.
I'm getting older, I wanted to have that opportunity to play someone who goes from his twenties to someone dying of cancer in his sixties.
Because you're sitting here asking me questions like I have something to say; there is something unimportant about it.
When I found out Cusack was involved, I liked that a lot.
I was in Sundance with Narc when I got the call that he'd died on the basketball court at age 37. He was on his way too. Blow was really sure handed. He was really coming into his own.
The Rat Pack was the piece that really kicked me out of that little funk that I was in and then Ted called me up and asked me if I wanted to be the dad in Blow.
I think that if you can achieve a balance, then you appease a lot of yourself and your career and what it takes to maintain in this business for a while.
You could just do independent movies, but I like bigger kind of studio movies, at least some of them.
I realized I needed to take supporting parts in high-profile movies and that fit into the plan.
Today some actors get a little full of themselves about what they're doing.
So I decided to form a production company with my wife and our partner Diane.
In college, I started out doing musicals and Shakespeare.
The first script I got was Narc and I really responded to it; it reminded me of a '70s type movie, I really liked the characters, I didn't anticipate the ending.
Then my career started changing, I got Hannibal and Heartbreakers, Blow and John Q, so I felt really comfortable taking that chance with a first-timer.
I've never stolen, I never did anything.
I didn't like some of the movies that were coming into me.
I mean, I understand that, I guess, it brings people to the movie, but I hope that I get really, really huge so that I don't have to do this anymore.
I was looking to become more proactive with my career because I wasn't crazy with some of the scripts I was getting - this was before Blow and Hannibal - so I decided to start my own production company.
I've only been in one fight in my whole life... in 7th grade, yet everyone thinks I'm a maniac.
I wanted to go that way and really get proactive with my career - take some control in it and redirect it in a direction that I liked.
Everybody thinks I'M a bad guy.
I'm in my forties now, too - one of the great things about those movies was the chance to work with Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Anthony Hopkins.
I've always wanted to do a scary-type movie. I like watching them and I thought it'd be fun to act in one, and it was.
Well, for Blow I had to age from 20 to 60, starting out in shape and then later putting on fat pads.
My wife read Narc as well and was really into it.
Something Wild was my first movie.
I know when I go to a movie I want to experience something, whether to laugh, to cry, to feel bad.
As soon as I became proactive in producing my own stuff, I started getting other roles.
I just finished Narc, which was a really heavy duty, raw, independent.
|
