One can only imagine how haunting and frustrating it must be for an actor who turned down or lost out on a role in David Chase’s TV-reforming phenomenon, “The Sopranos.” Easily one of the most influential television shows of the past three decades, anyone who said no to joining it — including Robert De Niro, who turned down the role of Tony Soprano — probably lives with that decision as one of the biggest regrets of their life.
The late Ray Liotta might have counted himself among those who regretted not joining the HBO series. It was rumored that he’d been offered the lead in Chase’s masterpiece, but he made it clear in an interview with The Guardian that this wasn’t the case. The truth is that Chase wanted Liotta to play Ralph Cifaretto (the role eventually went to Joe Pantoliano, who gave his vicious best and won an Emmy for the part), but the actor turned it down. And he had a good reason, too. “I didn’t want to do another mafia thing,” he recalled. “I was shooting ‘Hannibal.’ It just didn’t feel right at the time.”
Of course, when Liotta was offered a role in Chase’s “Sopranos” sequel, “The Many Saints of Newark,” he couldn’t fly to New York fast enough (at his own expense!) to meet with the show’s creator and personally ask him for the role of Aldo “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti. As he told The Guardian, “I’m really not sure what made me so determined. But I was, and luckily it all worked out.” At last, Liotta was a part of “The Sopranos” universe.
From time to time, Liotta always returned to do another mafia thing
Ray Liotta was pretty much typecast for at least half of his career thanks to his fantastic portrayal of real-life mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s iconic “Goodfellas.” Arguably, most of Liotta’s greatest work was in gritty crime movies and cop dramas like “Blow,” “Cop Land,” and “Killing Them Softly,” even if he had a far wider range as an actor. The second half of his career, however, offered him outstanding opportunities to prove that he was capable of portraying much more than an archetypal gangster or dirty cop. By appearing in lighter films like Geoff Moore and David Posamentier’s amusingly charming comedy “Better Living Through Chemistry” or Noah Baumbach’s award-worthy spousal drama “Marriage Story,” Liotta shone a light on his often overlooked acting skills.
One of Liotta’s final roles, in Dennis Lehane’s fascinating yet eerily disturbing Netflix miniseries, “Black Bird,” may have also been the actor’s most nuanced work on the small screen. The 6-episode show told the true story of mobster Jimmy Keene’s (Taron Egerton) deal with the FBI for a reduced sentence in exchange for getting a testimony from serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser).
Liotta played Keene’s father, Big Jim Keene, an honest and supportive ex-cop who tried his best to free his son from prison. It’s one of the few performances that allowed the actor to portray a reasonable and law-abiding man. It’s a far cry from the iconic gangster Henry Hill, but Liotta clearly gave it his all and showed that he could portray men in equal measure on both sides of the law. That said, there’s little doubt that he would’ve killed it on “The Sopranos” as well.