Cop Land is a 1997 American crime drama film written and directed by James Mangold. It features an ensemble cast featuring Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Michael Rapaport, Robert Patrick, Peter Berg, Arthur Nascarella and John Spencer.

Plot[link]

Set in 1988 in a fictional town of Garrison, New Jersey,^[1] located across the Hudson River from New York City, a large number of residents are NYPD Officers.

One night, the car of young cop Murray "Superboy" Babitch (Rapaport), nephew of Lt. Ray Donlan (Keitel), is sideswiped on the George Washington Bridge by a couple of African-American teens. Thinking they had fired at him, Babitch fires back and the teens are killed in the ensuing crash.

Worried about a possible racial incident, Ray's solution is to fake a suicide, pretending that Babitch jumped off the GWB. When a corrupt cop, Jack Rucker (Patrick), is caught trying to plant a weapon to justify the shooting, other corrupt Officers, including Det. Leo Crasky (Spencer) and Frank Lagonda (Nascarella), fear Babitch will resurface and testify to Internal Affairs.

IA Investigator Lt. Moe Tilden (De Niro) asks Garrison's mild-mannered half deaf Sheriff Freddy Heflin (Stallone) to provide information on the corrupt cops who live in his town. Though they work in a different city, Freddy views them as brothers and is reluctant to betray them, derailing Moe's investigation.

Freddy is secretly in love with Liz Randone (Annabella Sciorra), whose life he once saved in a near-drowning that cost him the hearing in one ear. The deafness prevented Freddy from joining the NYPD like so many others in town, including the man Liz eventually married, the abusive and unfaithful Joey Randone (Berg).

Although the cover-up at first seems successful, Ray is told by Patrolmen's Defense Association President Vincent Lassaro (Vincent) that without a body, the case will not stay cold. Ray reluctantly decides that his nephew should be killed. Babitch is tipped off by his aunt Rose (Cathy Moriarty) and escapes. He goes to Freddy's house looking for help, but when he sees Freddy's friend (and fellow NYPD cop) Gary "Figgsy" Figgis (Liotta), he flees. Earlier that night, Joey falls to his death on duty, aided by the fact that Ray took his time getting there (revenge for Joey's sexual affair with Ray's wife).

When Freddy realizes his mistake, he returns to Moe, but is angrily told that the case was blown by his failure to co-operate earlier. As he is shown the door, Freddy steals several NYPD files on the case. Back in his office, he studies the files and realizes the extent of his friends' corruption. Deputy Cindy Betts (Janeane Garofalo) decides to leave Garrison, frustrated by the New York cops having turned the town into their own personal fiefdom. Freddy returns home to find Figgsy packing to leave, not wanting to be further involved.

Freddy tells his Deputies what he is doing. Freddy also finds out that Figgsy burned down his own house, for the insurance money, accidentally resulting in the death of his crack-addicted girlfriend Monica (Mel Gorham). Freddy persuades Rose to reveal where her nephew is hiding. Freddy finds him and takes him to Garrison's jail. Soon after, Freddy's Deputy Bill Geisler (Noah Emmerich) leaves to tend to his pregnant wife.

Freddy attempts to take Babitch to New York to turn over to IA, but they are ambushed, Jack fires a gun next to Freddy's good ear and Babitch is taken. Knowing that Babitch has been taken to Ray's house to be killed, Freddy prepares to take them on by himself. A shootout follows, with Freddy killing Jack and Frank. Freddy is then shot in the shoulder by Leo, but is saved by the arrival of Figgsy, who kills Leo. Freddy and Figgsy continue into the house where Babitch is trying to escape through a window. Ray sneaks up behind Freddy, but before he can fire, Figgsy shoots at Ray but misses. Barely hearing the shot, Freddy turns and fatally shoots Ray. As Ray lays dying on the floor, he mutters obscenities toward Freddy, to which Freddy replies simply; "I can't hear you, Ray."

Later, after the scandal has been investigated and indictments handed down, Freddy, who has recovered, is seen looking at the New York skyline from across the Hudson. Deputy Geisler notifies him about a jack-knifed truck and Freddy goes back to work.

Cast[link]

• Sylvester Stallone as Sheriff Freddy Heflin
• Harvey Keitel as Lt. Ray Donlan
• Robert De Niro as Lt. Moe Tilden
• Ray Liotta as Officer Gary "Figgsy" Figgis
• Michael Rapaport as Officer Murray "Superboy" Babitch
• Robert Patrick as Officer Jack Rucker
• Peter Berg as Officer Joseph "Joey" Randone
• Arthur Nascarella as Officer Frank Lagonda
• John Spencer as Det. Leo Crasky
• Malik Yoba as Det. Sam Carson
• Noah Emmerich as Deputy Bill Geisler
• Janeane Garofalo as Deputy Cindy Betts
• Annabella Sciorra as Liz Randone
• Cathy Moriarty as Rose Donlan
• Frank Vincent as PDA President Vincent Lassaro
• Victor Williams as Officer Russell Ames
• John Ventimiglia as Officer Vic Trollio
• Edie Falco as Berta (Bomb Squad Agent)
• Mel Gorham as Monica Lopez
• Paul Calderón as Hector the Paramedic
• Vincent Laresca as Robert the Paramedic
• Deborah Harry as Delores (4 Aces bartender)
• Tony Sirico as Tony "Toy" Torillo (photo only)

Production[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

De Niro and Keitel had worked together on three previous films, Mean Streets in 1973, Taxi Driver in 1976, and Falling in Love in 1984. Due to the film's modest budget, all of the actors worked for scale. The entire main cast (with the exception of Robert Patrick) and most of the supporting cast, were born or raised in New York.

Numerous supporting actors in Cop Land would later appear in The Sopranos, including Edie Falco, Tony Sirico, John Ventimiglia, Frank Vincent, Annabella Sciorra, Robert Patrick, Arthur Nascarella and Janeane Garofalo.

John Travolta was offered the role of Freddy but turned it down.^{[citation needed]}

The movie is based on Mangold's hometown Washingtonville, New York. He grew up in a development called Worley Heights, where many of the residents were NYPD.^{[citation needed]} However, Edgewater, New Jersey was the principal shooting location. ^[2]

Reception[link]

Cop Land had its world premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York City on August 6, 1997. Some of the film's cast members attended, including Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Annabella Sciorra, Cathy Moriarty and Michael Rapaport.^[3]

Stallone's understated performance against type — he gained considerable weight for the role — was praised by critics and he received the Best Actor award at the Stockholm International Film Festival. Cop Land was also screened at the 54th Venice Film Festival in the Midnight line-up.^[4] Earlier in May 1997, the film was accepted into the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival, but Miramax declined the invitation due to re-shoots that were needed for the film, including footage of Stallone 40 pounds heavier.^[5]

Critical reaction was generally positive. Based on 59 reviews collected from notable publications by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an overall approval rating of 71%.^[6] Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and wrote, "There is a rough balance between how long a movie is, how deep it goes and how much it can achieve. That balance is not found in Cop Land and the result is too much movie for the running time".^[7] On the other hand, Gene Siskel praised the movie, especially the screenplay, "One to be savored."

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin felt that,

the strength of Cop Land is in its hard-edged, novelistic portraits, which pile up furiously during the film's dynamic opening scenes... Yet if the price of Mangold's casting ambitions is a story that can't, finally, match its marquee value, that value is still inordinately strong. Everywhere the camera turns in this tense and volatile drama, it finds enough interest for a truckload of conventional Hollywood fare. Whatever its limitations, Cop Land has talent to burn".^[8]

Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B-" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "Stallone does a solid, occasionally winning job of going through the motions of shedding his stardom, but the wattage of his personality is turned way down—at times, it's turned down to neutral. And that pretty much describes Cop Land, too. Dense, meandering, ambitious yet jarringly pulpy, this tale of big-city corruption in small-town America has competence without mood or power—a design but not a vision".^[9] In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, "With its redundancy of supporting characters, snarled subplots and poky pace, Cop Land really might have been better off trading the director for a traffic cop".^[10] Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers praised Stallone's performance: "His performance builds slowly but achieves a stunning payoff when Freddy decides to clean up his town ... Freddy awakes to his own potential, and it's exhilarating to watch the character and the actor revive in unison. Nearly down for the count in the movie ring, Stallone isn't just back in the fight. He's a winner".^[11] In his review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Mick LaSalle also liked Stallone's work: "His transformation is more than a matter of weight. He looks spiritually beaten and terribly sad. He looks like a real person, not a cult-of-the-body film star, and he uses the opportunity to deliver his best performance in years".^[12]

Soundtrack[link]

The soundtrack features two songs from Bruce Springsteen's 1980 album The River; "Drive All Night" and "Stolen Car", and a score from Howard Shore.

The score by Howard Shore was performed by The London Philharmonic Orchestra released as a Cop Land Miramax Motion picture in 1997. The soundtrack was released on CD contained twelve tracks with a runtime of 40:11 minutes.^[13][14]

All music composed by Howard Shore.

Home video[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Cop Land: Director's Cut was released to DVD in June 2004. Features include the original 112-minute cut, restoration of deleted scenes and scenes extended, addition of New York band Blue Öyster Cult's "Burnin' for You" to the soundtrack and a new audio commentary with James Mangold, Sylvester Stallone, Robert Patrick and producer Cathy Konrad. Also included are a "Shootout Storyboard Sequence" and "The Making of an Urban Western" documentary.

On the DVD, there are two deleted scenes that primarily show the racism in the town of Garrison. One scene involves all the resident Police Officers chasing down a pair of black motorists and the other shows Heflin's Deputy pointing out that the majority of the tickets issued in Garrison go to black motorists on charges that suggest racial profiling. The movie itself implies a racist undercurrent in Garrison as all the NYPD Officers who live there are White, a black Internal Affairs Detective Carson implies that the cops who live in Garrison are racist to a black Patrolman named Russell who is at the scene of the bridge shootout, a black couple who drives through Garrison are unjustly given a ticket by one of Heflin's Deputies and blacks are implied by the Officers in different ways as "certain people" who are scared of Garrison and as an "outside element" that would present a crime problem to Garrison.

Legacy[link]

Unlike 1991's Oscar and 1992's Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, Stallone's previous high-profile attempts at branching out of the one-dimensional action star roles, both of which ultimately ended up commercially unsuccessful, critically panned, and often ridiculed, Cop Land with its star-studded heavyweight ensemble cast was met with high expectations as a multifaceted story based around corruption on the New York City police force. Additionally, it was to show Stallone in a completely different light, both physically (his 40lb weight gain got a lot of press coverage) as well as artistically by letting him showcase his acting skills. And while the film posted a solid box-office intake ($44.8 million domestically), got good reviews, and Stallone received positive critical notices for his performance as a demure small-town sheriff, in 2008 the actor stated on the Opie and Anthony Show that Cop Land "hurt" his career and that he had trouble getting roles for eight years, due to the film's failure to reach the high expectations set for it and the mix of views on whether he was leaving action movies for more character-driven content. Stallone has described this as "the beginning of the end, for about eight years".^[15]

In 2011, for Cop Land's release on Blu-ray, the film's writer and director James Mangold commented on the film's reception: "The movie was under so much pressure to be America's next Pulp Fiction. But it's such a dark and sad tale, less jazzy and more of a kind of morality tale. It ends in a dark place. The star value got so high, and Miramax wanted the grosses to be so high. When it came out, a lot of daggers were out for Sly. He had made a bunch of shittier moves, he’s the first to admit, that weren't aimed for the highest result each time out".^[16]

The title of the film was later used as a title of a mission in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, where the main character Tommy Vercetti is voiced by Ray Liotta.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Cop Land at the Internet Movie Database
• Cop Land at Rotten Tomatoes
• Cop Land at Metacritic

Howard Shore
Shore in New York on October 7, 2010
Background information
Birth name	Howard Leslie Shore
Born	(1946-10-18) October 18, 1946 (age 65) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Genres	Classical, Orchestra, Film Score
Occupations	composer, orchestrator, conductor, music producer
Years active	1978–present
Website	howardshore.com

Howard Leslie Shore (born October 18, 1946) is a Canadian composer, notable for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, for which he won three Academy Awards. He is also a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg, having scored all but one of his films since 1979.

He has also composed a few concert works including one opera, The Fly, based on the plot (though not his score) of Cronenberg's 1986 film premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris on 2 July 2008.,^[1] a short piece Fanfare for the Wanamaker Organ and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a short overture for the Swiss 21st Century Symphony Orchestra.

Shore is a three-time winner of the Academy Award, and has also won three Golden Globe Awards and four Grammy Awards. He is the uncle of film composer Ryan Shore.^[2] Shore serves on the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, Berklee College of Music.^[3]

Early life and career[link]

Shore was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Bernice (née Ash) and Mac Shore.^[4] He studied music at Berklee College of Music in Boston after graduating from Forest Hill Collegiate Institute. From 1969 to 1972, he performed with the group Lighthouse. In 1970 he was the music director of Lorne Michaels and Hart Pomerantz's short-lived TV program The Hart & Lorne Terrific Hour. Shore wrote the music for Canadian magician Doug Henning's magical/musical Spellbound in 1974, and he was the musical director for Lorne Michaels' hugely influential late-night NBC comedy show Saturday Night Live from 1975 to 1980, appearing in many musical sketches, including Howard Shore and His All-Nurse Band, and dressed as a beekeeper for a John Belushi/Dan Aykroyd performance of the Slim Harpo classic I'm a King Bee. Shore also suggested the name for The Blues Brothers to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.

Film scoring[link]

1979–2000[link]

Shore's first film score was to David Cronenberg's first major film The Brood (1979). He would go on to score all of Cronenberg's subsequent films, with the exception of The Dead Zone (1983), which was scored by Michael Kamen. The first film he scored that was not directed by Cronenberg was Martin Scorsese's After Hours.

Following After Hours, he scored The Fly (1986), again directed by Cronenberg. Two years later, he composed the score to Big (1988), directed by Penny Marshall and starring Tom Hanks. He then scored two more of David Cronenberg's films: Dead Ringers (1988) and Naked Lunch (1991).

During 1991, Shore composed the score for the highly acclaimed film The Silence of the Lambs, starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, and directed by Jonathan Demme. He received his first BAFTA nomination for the score. The film became the third (and most recent) to win the five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Actress). Shore is the only living composer to have scored a "Top Five" Oscar winning film.

During 1993, he composed the scores for M. Butterfly (another collaboration with Cronenberg), Philadelphia (his second collaboration with Jonathan Demme), and Mrs. Doubtfire, directed by Chris Columbus. The latter two films were highly successful; Philadelphia winning Tom Hanks his first Oscar.

Shore scored another three films in 1994: The Client, Ed Wood, and Nobody's Fool. Ed Wood is notable for being one of the two films directed by Tim Burton that did not feature a score by Danny Elfman.

Shore continued to score numerous films from 1995–2001, including two David Fincher films, Seven (1995) and The Game (1997); also, he collaborated on two films with Cronenberg along with Tom Hanks' directorial debut, That Thing You Do!. Shore composed the score for the 2000 film The Cell.

2001–2005[link]

Shore at LOTR press conference at Wellington, New Zealand in 2003.

Shore's major success came in 2001 with his score to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first film in the highly acclaimed The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The news that Shore would score the trilogy surprised some, since he was primarily associated with dark, ominous films and had never scored an epic of this scale. However, the score was hugely successful and won Shore his first Oscar, as well as a Grammy Award, and nominations for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA.

The following year, Shore composed the scores to Panic Room, Gangs of New York (replacing Elmer Bernstein), and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the second film in the trilogy. The latter two films were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, although neither won. Shore's score for The Two Towers was deemed ineligible for submission to the Academy, due to a new rule that disallowed the submission of scores which contained themes from previous work. This rule proved very unpopular, due to the fact that had it been present in earlier years, it would have invalidated various other sequel scores (such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones) from being nominated. As a result the Academy dispensed with this rule for future years. Shore did, however, receive a BAFTA nomination for Gangs of New York.

In 2003 he composed the score for the final film in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The film was the most successful film in the trilogy and the most successful of the year. Shore won his second Oscar for Best Original Score, as well as a third for Best Original Song for "Into the West", which he shared with Fran Walsh and Annie Lennox. The film was nominated for, and won a total of eleven Academy Awards, a record for the number of Oscars won by a single film, and a record that only two other films—Titanic (1997) and Ben-Hur (1959)—have matched. Shore also won his first Golden Globe, his third and fourth Grammy (the fourth for Best Song), and was nominated for a third BAFTA. The scores of The Lord of the Rings became one of the most successful film scores ever written, and the biggest success in Shore's career.

In 2004, Shore again collaborated with Martin Scorsese, scoring his epic film The Aviator. He won a second Golden Globe for the score, becoming the second composer to have won consecutive Golden Globes in the Original Score category. He also received his sixth Grammy nomination, and his fifth BAFTA nomination.

He collaborated again with David Cronenberg in 2005 to score A History of Violence, starring Viggo Mortensen. The film was a success and received two Oscar nominations. In 2006, he collaborated for the fourth time with Martin Scorsese, this time to score The Departed. The film was highly successful and won four Oscars, including a long awaited win for Scorsese, and Best Picture.

Although Shore was originally commissioned to compose the soundtrack for King Kong (indeed, he had already recorded most of the music), he was later replaced by James Newton Howard due to "differing creative aspirations for the score" on his and the filmmakers' parts. This was a mutual agreement between himself and Peter Jackson. Despite this, Shore has a cameo near the end of King Kong as the conductor of the pit orchestra in the theater, performing portions of Max Steiner's score to the original 1933 version of the film.

2006–present[link]

In 2007, he composed the music for Soul of the Ultimate Nation, an online multiplayer video game. The soundtrack is notable for being the first video game soundtrack to feature Lydia Kavina on the theremin. During 2007 he also composed the scores to The Last Mimzy, and Eastern Promises, the latter of which was another collaboration with David Cronenberg and earned Shore his fourth Golden Globe nomination. In 2008 he scored Doubt, starring Meryl Streep and directed by John Patrick Shanley. The film was a success, earning five Oscar nominations.

In 2010, Shore composed the score to the third installment in the highly popular Twilight film series, following Carter Burwell and Alexandre Desplat, who scored the first and second films, respectively. He also replaced John Corigliano to score Edge of Darkness, starring Mel Gibson.

Shore's 2011 projects are A Dangerous Method, continuing his long-term collaboration with director David Cronenberg. He also composed the score to Martin Scorsese's Hugo, his fifth collaboration with the director, which earned him a sixth Golden Globe nomination and fourth Oscar nomination.

Shore's future projects include Robert Sigl's The Spider^[5] and Peter Jackson's The Hobbit,^[6] which is currently in production. He is also set to compose the music to Sinatra,^[7] and The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,^[8] both of which are being directed by Martin Scorsese and are due for release in 2013.

Conducting and performing[link]

Since 2004, he has toured the world conducting local orchestras in the performance of his new symphonic arrangement of his highly acclaimed Lord of the Rings scores. The new work is entitled The Lord of the Rings: Symphony in Six Movements. There are two movements for each of the movies, and an intermission between the second and third (or first and second, in some cases) movements. The concert presentation of the symphony also includes projected still images relating the music being performed to scenes from the films. Recently, however, Shore has been busy with other projects, leaving other conductors including Markus Huber, Alexander Mickelthwaite, and John Mauceri to lead the orchestras. April 24, 2008 marked the North American Live to Projection debut of Fellowship of the Ring, with the score performed live by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ludwig Wicki. Wicki also conducted the Filene Center Orchestra at the Wolf Trap Farm Park in Vienna, Virginia on May 21 and 22, 2008 in the U.S. premiere of the Fellowship of the Ring Live to Projection. September 16, 2010 Shore conducted the RSO Vienna (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra) which performed "In Dreams from The Fellowship of the Ring" at Hollywood in Vienna in Vienna, Austria.

Television[link]

• Shore was commissioned by Macy's to write a Fanfare for the Store's 150th anniversary featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Wanamaker Organ, the world's largest playing pipe organ. The work was debuted in the Grand Court of Macy's Philadelphia Store on September 27, 2008 in a concert that drew reviews from most of the major East Coast newspapers.
• With John Lurie, Shore wrote the theme song for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The theme was carried over to The Tonight Show when O'Brien succeeded Jay Leno as host.

Radio[link]

• Shore narrates a one-hour CBC Radio documentary/soundscape on music in thriller/suspense film genres also including references to radio dramas and other media. The episode was called "Unsettling Scores"^[9] and premiered on the program called Inside the Music.

Awards[link]

Shore has received four Academy Award nominations, winning three, two for Best Original Score, for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). He also won the Oscar for Best Original Song for "Into the West" from Return of the King. He received his fourth nomination for his work on Hugo.

Shore has also received six Golden Globe nominations, winning three consecutive awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song - "Into the West" for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and The Aviator (2004), making him the only the second composer (after Alan Menken) to have received consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Original Score. He also won three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Score for each of the Lord of the Rings films, and received a second award in 2003 for the song "Into the West" from "Return of the King" in the category of Best Song. He has also received five BAFTA nominations, but has not won.

On June 11, 2007, Shore was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree from York University in Toronto for "his sweeping artistic vision".^[10]

Shore has also been honored with awards from The National Board of Review, Recording Academy Honors, The Broadcast Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics, Genie Award, World Soundtrack Award, New York's Gotham Award, and The Saturn Award for Science Fiction.

Shore is the first recipient of the Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for a Science Fiction Feature Film for The Last Mimzy.

On September 16, 2010 he was awarded with the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award by the City of Vienna at the yearly film music gala concert Hollywood in Vienna.^[11]

Filmography[link]

See also[link]

• List of noted film producer and composer collaborations

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Howard Shore

• Official website
• Howard Shore at the Internet Movie Database
• Howard Shore at Soundtrackguide.net
• Howard Shore at The Danish Filmmusic Society (DFS)
• Howard Shore Interview at Tracksounds

Ray Liotta
Liotta at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival
Born	Raymond Allen Liotta (1954-12-18) December 18, 1954 (age 57) Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1978–present

Raymond Allen "Ray" Liotta (born December 18, 1954) is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Henry Hill in the crime-drama Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese and his role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams. He has won an Emmy Award and been nominated for a Golden Globe Award. He is also known for starring as the protagonist, Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Early life[link]

He was born in Newark, New Jersey, and was adopted at the age of six months by Mary Liotta, an appointed township clerk, and Alfred Liotta, an auto parts store owner, personnel director, and the president of a local Democratic club.^[1] Both of his parents unsuccessfully ran for local office.^[2] Liotta had believed his biological parents were of Scottish and Italian descent,^[3] but eventually reunited with his biological mother and discovered that she is not of Italian descent.^[4][5] In 1973, Liotta graduated from Union High School in Union, New Jersey, and was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 1992. Liotta studied acting at the University of Miami, where he performed at the university's Jerry Herman Ring Theatre.

Career[link]

One of Liotta's earliest roles was as Joey Perrini on the soap opera Another World. He appeared on the show from 1978 to 1981. He infamously made his film debut sexually assaulting Pia Zadora with a garden hose in the cult classic The Lonely Lady. In 1987, he earned his first Golden Globe nomination"HFPA – Awards Search". 1.hfpa.org. http://www1.hfpa.org/browse/member/29970. Retrieved July 7, 2009.  for his portrayal of volatile ex-con Ray Sinclair in Jonathan Demme's film Something Wild (1986). In 1989, he costarred, along with Kevin Costner, in the fantasy/drama film, Field of Dreams. Liotta portrayed Shoeless Joe Jackson, the ghost of the famed baseball player. In 1990, Liotta portrayed real-life mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's film Goodfellas. In 1992, he costarred, along with Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe, in the thriller Unlawful Entry as an psychopatic cop. He also a leading role in No Escape. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Liotta would earn more critical praise for his turn in James Mangold's film Cop Land, starring alongside Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel. In 1998, he received critical praise for his performance as the compulsive gambling but decent policeman Harry Collins, in the crime film, Phoenix.

In addition to his film roles, Liotta portrayed singer Frank Sinatra in the 1998 TV movie The Rat Pack (for which he received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination) and provided the voice of Tommy Vercetti for the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. That same year he appeared as Det. Lt. Henry Oak in the Joe Carnahan-directed film Narc, receiving an Independent Spirit Award nomination and a Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards nomination for Best Supporting Male, a praised performance that many critics considered to be Liotta's career best. He then reunited with director James Mangold in 2003 alongside John Cusack and Alfred Molina in the dark horror-thriller Identity, remembered for its very unique and clever twist. He also narrated Inside the Mafia for the National Geographic Channel in 2005. Liotta had a memorable guest appearance that year on the television drama ER playing Charlie Metcalf in the episode "Time of Death". The role earned him an Emmy for "Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series". Liotta would later spoof himself and his Emmy win in Bee Movie. He starred in the 2006 CBS television series Smith, which was pulled from the schedule after only three episodes had aired. He later appeared in Smokin' Aces (reuniting with Narc director Joe Carnahan), portraying an FBI agent named Donald Carruthers in one of the lead roles. He appeared with John Travolta in the movie Wild Hogs and with Johnny Depp in the 2001 film Blow, portraying the father of drug dealer George Jung.

Liotta has appeared in Battle in Seattle as the city's mayor, and in Hero Wanted playing a detective alongside Cuba Gooding Jr.. He was also in Crossing Over, co-starring Harrison Ford. Liotta played Detective Harrison in the 2009 Jody Hill comedy Observe and Report as Seth Rogen's nemesis from the local police. In 2011, he starred in The Son of No One, opposite Channing Tatum and for the first time in his career, Al Pacino.^[6] He told ABC's Good Morning America in 2001 that he was offered the role of Tony Soprano by series creator David Chase but turned it down to focus on movies.

Liotta's recent movies include Date Night with Steve Carell, Charlie St. Cloud with Zac Efron, the independent drama Snowmen, and The River Sorrow, which stars Liotta as a detective alongside Christian Slater and Ving Rhames.

Personal life[link]

Liotta married actress Michelle Grace in February 1997. They met at her ex-husband's (Mark Grace) baseball game; they also co-starred in The Rat Pack, in which Liotta played Frank Sinatra and Grace played Judith Campbell Exner. Their daughter, Karsen, was born in December 1998. The couple divorced in 2004. Liotta currently resides in Pacific Palisades, California.

A baseball pitcher bearing his name is currently in the Kansas City Royals system.^[7]

As part of his contract for starring in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale as Gallian, Liotta had permission to keep all wizard robes donned for the film.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Ray Liotta at the Internet Movie Database