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“Hello beautiful. Surprise.”
Those were the first words most people heard from Ray Liotta in Jonathan Demme’s 1986 road trip comedy “Something Wild.” At least it was a road trip comedy until then.
During the previous hour, Lulu, played by Melanie Griffith, and Charlie (Jeff Daniels) seemed to be embarking on an eccentric picaresque about misguided lovers making a strange car trip from Manhattan to Pennsylvania. When the character of Liotta, Lulu’s ex-husband, accidentally named Ray, appeared, the emotional mood changed in an instant. Looking at Lulu and Charlie with ice-blue eyes, their muscles jumping alarmingly under a black T-shirt, Ray injected a real threat into a quirky romance that became deadly ugly the moment he appeared on screen.
“WHO is that boy? “viewers immediately wondered about Liotta, who died this week at the age of 67 in the Dominican Republic, where she was filming a movie. (The cause is still being investigated.)
“Something Wild” wasn’t Liotta’s on-screen debut: she already had a movie credit and starred in the long-running soap opera “Another World.” But as a violent, abusive, and ultimately psychotic Ray Sinclair, he exploded into the public consciousness in what is still described as one of the most amazing performances in generational memory: Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl.” Eddie Murphy’s “48 Hrs.” Ray Liotta in “Something Wild” deserves a place in this pantheon, announcing the kind of raw talent and native charisma that can’t be manufactured or marketed.
Liotta starred in two shocking dramas shortly after “Something Wild,” starring as a medical student in “Dominick & Eugene” (1988) and as Shoeless Joe Jackson in “Field of Dreams” (1989). But he could not escape his basic power as a performer: the feeling of menace, through the physical size, a slightly marked face, a feline smile and those javelin missile eyes, which he gave off just by being there . By all accounts, Liotta was a charming man in person. On screen, there was no one more frightening, and that slow-fire quality, the quintessential “dangerous personality,” explains why the audience couldn’t take their eyes off him. Regardless of the size of the frame or paper, once Liotta appeared on the screen, she was possessed by the force of intimidation.
Critics, fans and colleagues are reacting to the death of Ray Liotta at the age of 67
This combination of intimidation and attraction defined Liotta’s performance as a Henry Hill gangster in “Goodfellas” in the 1990s, where she led the film and stayed with people such as Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Paul Sorvino. . He went from fresh-faced American to Irish from a child to a coquettish informant with a convincing dissolution, his eyes dart to charcoal-black spots as his character’s moral core sank. Between these two extremes, he interpreted the glamor of the paper with an equally credible genius: when his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) apologetically explains in a voiceover that seeing him hit the light of day by a harassing neighbor turned it on , the spectators. he could be forgiven for feeling the same unsettling combination of repulsion and fascination.
Liotta made dozens of other films: she made a particularly impressive turn in 1997’s “Cop Land” and played a believable Frank Sinatra in the television movie “The Rat Pack.” (1998), but most observers agree that he did not have the career he deserved. It was gratifying to see him more often in recent years, sometimes mocking his own terrifying character, other times playing with grace and self-conscious traces of humor. Her portrayal of a ruthless divorce lawyer (what else?) In Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” (2019) was a good return to form and a tempting promise of what Liotta might be directing in the final chapters of his career.
No matter what Liotta did: a guest shot in a sitcom, a cameo in a pulp action thriller, a supporting role in a well-to-do indie, never lost his ability to startle, just with his presence. That initial thrill of menace and volatility would give way to delight (“Oh, it’s Ray Liotta!”), But it was always a start. The Hollywood star-making machinery can work as hard as it can, but no one can pretend what Ray Liotta had: the ability to come out of nowhere, capture our attention, and earn our emotional loyalty, not per how he acted but for who he continued to be when he acted.
“Hello beautiful. Surprise.”
Ray Liotta did not stop surprising, until he left the stage too soon.