Ray Liotta, the American actor best known for playing mobster Henry Hill in Goodfellas and baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams, He died at the age of 67 in the Dominican Republic, where he had traveled to film a new movie. His representatives who said he died in his sleep Wednesday night.
An official from the Dominican National Institute of Forensic Sciences confirmed Liotta’s death. He said his body was taken to the Cristo Redentor morgue.
Liotta was born in 1954 and was adopted at the age of six months from an orphanage. Although he grew up playing sports, including baseball, during his senior year of high school the drama teacher at his school asked him if he wanted to be in a play, which he agreed to do for fun. And he stayed forever.
After graduating from acting at the University of Miami, he got his first big break on the soap opera Another World. His first big film role came in SomethingWild, by Jonathan Demme as Ray, Melanie Griffith’s character’s brash ex-con husband.
A few years later he would get the role of the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams. But, without a doubt, his most iconic role was the mobster in Goodfellas from director Martin Scorsese, who arrived shortly after.
“Totally heartbroken to hear this terrible news about my Ray,” actress Lorraine Bracco, who played Karen Hill in Goodfellas. “I can be anywhere in the world and people will come and tell me that their favorite movie is Goodfellas. Then they always ask what the best part of making that movie was. My answer has always been the same…Ray Liotta.”
Alessandro Nivola, who appeared Liotta in The Sopranos, he said: “I feel very lucky to have faced this legend in one of his final roles. “The scenes we did together were among the highlights of my acting career. He was dangerous, unpredictable, hilarious, and generous with his praise for other actors. Too soon.”
Jamie Lee Curtis, Liotta’s co-star in Dominick and Eugenetweet: “Ray Liotta is dead. His work as an actor showed the complexity of him as a human being. A gentle man. Very sad to hear.”
