Last week, the beloved actor Ray Liotta passed away. He was only 67 and seemed to have at least another couple decades of exciting work ahead of him. Liotta is perhaps most famous for starring in Goodfellas, whose director, Martin Scorsese, released a brief but impassioned statement honoring him. The legendary filmmaker elaborated in a piece published by The Guardian, in which he expresses remorse for only having directed him once.
“We had many plans to work together again but the timing was always off, or the project wasn’t quite right. I regret that now,” Scorsese wrote. He continued:
“When I watched Ray as the divorce lawyer in Marriage Story – he’s genuinely scary in the role, which is precisely why he’s so funny – I remember feeling that I wanted to work with him again at this point in his life, to explore the gravity in his presence, so different from the young, sprightly actor he was when I met him.
“I wish I’d had the chance to see him just once more, too – to tell him just how much the work we did together meant to me. But maybe he knew that. I hope so.”
Scorsese wrote about how Liotta had first blown him away in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild, in which he plays the ex-convict ex-boyfriend of Melanie Griffith’s character. “Halfway through the picture, he walked in and more or less took it over. You couldn’t take your eyes off of him,” Scorsese wrote. “But Ray’s role in Something Wild was finite, and I wondered if he could carry a whole picture.”
He also wrote about fighting to make Liotta the lead in Goodfellas, a big production made at a time when Scorsese wasn’t exactly popular with Hollywood execs. During the shoot, Liotta’s adopted mother, who raised him, was on death’s door. He got the news before they filmed the scene where the characters played by Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and himself bring a big suitcase of money to Paul Sorvino’s Paulie — a jubilant moment filled with laughter. Scorsese told him to go see his mother straight away, but Liotta was adamant they shoot the scene first.
“Laughter and tears, tears and laughter … they were one and the same,” Scorsese wrote. “Ray did the scene so beautifully, and then he left to be with his beloved mother. It was a rare experience.”
You can read Scorsese’s entire tribute at The Guardian.