R. Kurt Osenlund, July 2013

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

18. R.Kurt Osenlund is the managing editor of OUT Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @AddisonDeTwitt.
    

Email: rkurtosenlund@gmail.com.

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        As should be expected, Ray Liotta doesn’t have time for bullshit. When he enters a Waldorf Towers hotel suite where a handful of journalists wait, he gets straight to breaking the ice.

        “Do you have an extra Band-Aid?” he asks one writer, who’s wearing a Band-Aid on his cheek. Apparently Liotta cut his finger en route to this interview. “I’m sorry, I don’t,” the writer says, before getting antsy and quickly asking the first question. “Who are you, the captain?” Liotta asks, inciting a small eruption of laughter. “Well, I guess somebody’s gotta take charge,” the actor says.

        Taking charge and mending wounds are two things filmgoers have seen Liotta do time and  again on screen, through an iconic career that’s spanned three decades. Best known for his work in dramas like Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, a masterpiece of the mob genre, Liotta has made a name for himself embodying an array of toughs and undesirables, who, even when they aren’t all bad, register as formidable giants. Over the past year, Liotta has appeared in Killing Them Softly, The Place Beyond the Pines, and The Iceman, three films that are unquestionably up his alley. In the latter two, he takes on the roles of a dirty cop and a mafia captain, respectively, two archetypes the 58-year-old was put on  Earth to play. And yet, it’s hard to believe he got his start in the comparatively benign world of daytime television.

    “When I first started, here in New York, I was on a soap opera,” Liotta says, referring to his role as Joey Perrini on Another World. “I did that until I was 25, and then I moved to L.A. Then for five years, nothing happened. I was just in acting class all the time. And then later, throughout acting class, whenever I’d finish a movie, I’d go back to class. So I was always constantly working out.”

    Liotta employs that terminology more than once when describing his craft: Not “working,” but “working out,” as if his continuing experiences as an actor have been like the training of a prize fighter. “You realize you just gotta take action,” Liotta says while still discussing his earlier days. “You might want to do something specific but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get it. I’d rather be working out, if you will, then just sitting there, not.”

    In terms of actual, literal working out, Liotta, in truth, doesn’t look like he does much of it. The actor has never seemed particularly out of shape, but nor has he ever been what’s so reductively referred to as “conventionally handsome.” His hard, unforgiving, and distinctly weathered face has been his calling card and his meal ticket, helping him to land the rough roles that have come to define his filmography. In person, and with a good bit of life behind him, the actor looks even more worn than you’d think, his face akin to hammered metal, like he’s been through war. But what remains, and what’s always been his true physical gift, is a set of piercing eyes that are alternately frightening and captivating. Those eyes are hard at work in The Iceman, a pseudo-biopic about chilly killer Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon), wherein Liotta plays real-life Gambino crime family member Roy DeMeo.

    “He was a maniac,” Liotta says of his character. “He was chopping up bodies and spreading them all over the city. I read a lot of books and a lot of biographies on him. His son wrote a book, and I read that, too. He also appears in some other mafia books I came across. It was all really just for knowledge, this reading. I find different types of people of fascinating, and the stuff in this movie—that’s just a whole world unto itself.”

    Since Liotta is someone who, in a film buff’s mind, is intrinsically tied to organized crime in the cinema, it’s considerably jarring to hear him point out that DeMeo is the first true gangster he’s played since Henry Hill in Goodfellas (another fact-based tale). The statement seems shocking because, in the 23 years between the two films, the actor has played a plethora of “Liotta types,” who, be they a crooked officer in Unlawful Entry (1992), a crazed criminal being air-transported to prison in Turbulence (1997), or a cop who plays by his own rules in Narc (2002), may as well have been borrowed from the mafia (Liotta did play a mob boss in the 2010 comedy Date Night, but mainly as a playful parody of his image). The actor doesn’t explicitly say why he’s kept his gangster parts to a minimum, but he does offer tidbits as to why he may have wanted to distance himself from the genre, such as pitiful, post-Goodfellas run-ins with real-life mob snitch Hill.

    “I never kept in touch with Henry,” Liotta says, “but once in Venice, I remember I was walking with my friend, and we had parked and we were going to go to a Sunday brunch. And we were walking, and hear this guy go, ‘Hey Ray!’ And I look over, and this guy’s, like, still drunk, and it’s 10 o’clock in the morning. He says ‘Ray, it’s Henry!’ And it was. It was Henry Hill, and he was just blotto. And every time I saw him over the years in California he was wasted. He was really messed up.” [Hill died of heart trouble last year at the age of 69.]

    For the most part, Liotta seems to want to keep things light, but with a strong demeanor that shows playful intimidation and an utter lack of fear. An assistant finally, almost magically, appears with that Band-Aid he requested, and he turns to the writer he queried at the start. “That’s good news for you, captain,” he teases. “You’re lucky I didn’t take the one off of your face. Who knows what you’re covering over there.”

    Like many (occasionally typecast) tough guys, Liotta has proven highly effective at comedy, not least because of the irony his presence can provide. He’s repeatedly (and deftly) channeled his singular intensity into lighthearted fare, like Operation Dumbo Drop (1995), Heartbreakers (2001), and Observe and Report (2009). The same vigor that’s let him master the art of pointing a gun with hair-raising conviction can be applied to the rapid-fire delivery of a punchline. As plenty of his co-stars would surely attest, getting cut down to size by Liotta is something of a privilege, so much so that seeing him goad a fellow journalist elicits a tinge of jealousy.

    “You really just read the script,” Liotta says, humbly, about his process. “After a while, the script gives you all you need. When I was younger, I held onto things more and I was more method-y. Because you’re finally getting your chance and you want to come across strong. So you have a tendency to hold onto things longer. But you realize, the more you do this, and the more experience you gain, that when you’re filming and you’re locked into what you’re supposed to do, you’re really just thinking about that.”

    There’s still, of course, the matter of getting amped up for a scene that requires some of that trademark Liotta aggression. Is he just downing espresssos on set before the director yells “action”?

“Nah, you find things,” Liotta says. “There’s always something around to piss you off.”

Shades of Ray

One of cinema’s preeminent bad boys for more than 30 years, Ray Liotta has perfected

his knack for pinning viewers to their seats in ways as thrilling as they are intimidating.

Recently, he’s appeared as a mafioso in The Iceman, a crime-ring figurehead

in Killing Them Softly (now available on DVD), and a crooked cop

in The Place Beyond the Pines (available on DVD Aug. 3).

In person, he’s all the rugged and dryly humorous

wiseguy you could hope for.