Ray Liotta was an American actor and film producer. He recently passed away unexpectedly.
So let’s find out some trivia and facts about his life and career.
- His full name is Raymond Allen Liotta
- He was born on December 18, 1954
- He died on May 26, 2022
- He was an American actor and film producer
- He was most known for his roles as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989) and Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990)
- He was a Primetime Emmy Award winning actor
- Ray Liotta received a Golden Globe Award nomination and two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations
- Ray Liotta first gained attention for his role as Ray Sinclair in the Jonathan Demme film Something Wild (1986)
- For the film he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture nomination
- He continued to star in films such as Dominick and Eugene (1988), Unlawful Entry (1992), Cop Land (1997) Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), John Q (2002), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Kill the Messenger (2014), Marriage Story (2019)
- His most recent credit was in the Sopranos prequel theatrical film The Many Saints of Newark (2021)
- He was also known for his television work in ER
- For the role he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2004
- He starred as Frank Sinatra in the television film The Rat Pack (1998) and Lorca and Tom Mitchell in Texas Rising (2015)
- For the latter he earned Screen Actors Guild Award nominations
- He also starred in the drama series Shades of Blue (2016–2018) with Jennifer Lopez
- He was also known as Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)
- Ray Liotta was born in Newark, New Jersey, on December 18, 1954
- Having been abandoned at an orphanage, he was adopted at the age of six months by township clerk Mary and auto-parts store owner Alfred Liotta
- His adoptive parents were of Italian and Scottish descent
- Alfred was a personnel director and president of a local Democratic Party club
- His adoptive parents each unsuccessfully ran for local political office
- He recalled attending parades to hand out flyers for his father’s run
- Liotta had a sister, Linda, who was also adopted. He said that he knew he was adopted as a young child, and presented a show-and-tell report on it for kindergarten
- He hired a private detective to locate his biological mother in the 2000s, from whom he learned that he was mostly of Scottish descent
- He had one biological sister, one biological half-brother, and five biological half-sisters
- Liotta grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Union, New Jersey
- Although his family was not especially religious, they attended church and he received first communion
- It was confirmed, but the family did not pray much
- He occasionally used prayer in his daily life
- In 1973, he graduated from Union High School
- Ray Liotta was later named to the Union High School Hall of Fame
- Liotta attended the University of Miami
- There he studied acting and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1978
- He performed in musicals, including Cabaret, Dames at Sea, Oklahoma, and The Sound of Music, at the University of Miami’s Jerry Herman Ring Theatre
- Ray Liotta married actress and producer Michelle Grace in February 1997
- They met at a baseball game, where her former husband Mark Grace was playing for the Chicago Cubs
- The couple had a daughter, Karsen
- They were divorced in 2004
- On an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, Liotta revealed that Nancy and Tina Sinatra, daughters of Frank Sinatra, once sent Liotta a horse’s head in the mail
- The joke was in response to Liotta demurring to play their late father in a miniseries they were working on
- Only to see Liotta play him in the 1998 HBO television film The Rat Pack
- In February 2007, he was charged for driving under the influence after crashing his Cadillac Escalade into two parked vehicles in Pacific Palisades
- He pleaded no contest
- From his experience shooting the Western Texas Rising, Liotta continued horseback riding
- Ray Liotta died in his sleep on May 26, 2022
- He died in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
- He was filming Dangerous Waters
- At the time of his death, he was engaged to Jacy Nittolo
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