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" Ray Liotta is a great character actor because he doesn&amp;#039;t pick parts for the lofty reasons usually given by stars. When asked why he was in Turbulence and voice-acted for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, he was characteristically to the point: &amp;quot;For the money.&amp;quot; That wouldn&amp;#039;t seem so remarkable if Liotta weren&amp;#039;t so compelling onscreen. He frequently steals scenes from higher-billed stars, whether in Something Wild or Hannibal. In Killing Them Softly (out in theaters this weekend), a slick and happily cynical anti-thriller starring Brad Pitt and directed by Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesses James by the Coward Robert Ford), Liotta plays a card shark who gets taken for all he&amp;#039;s worth. Now fifty-eight and still most famous for Goodfellas, Liotta is still working constantly, often with new talent, and treating acting like nothing more or less than a great job. We talked to Liotta in New York City earlier this week about the evolution of his career, his lack of a method, open-heart surgery, Cloud Atlas, and revisiting Goodfellas with his teenaged daughter. ESQUIRE.COM: I know you don&amp;#039;t like to talk about your characters as versions of yourself. RAY LIOTTA: I don&amp;#039;t think it really comes down to that. I don&amp;#039;t think that the movies are done as an explanation of who I am at all. I&amp;#039;ve never even been in a fight, and here I am playing a lot of guys who are. That&amp;#039;s why I like this one, because they were beating me up.  ESQ: It seems like there&amp;#039;s no ego in it for you. You&amp;#039;ve talked before about how you do roles for the money or the process, which I think is part of what makes you a great character actor. Do you think that&amp;#039;s a fair description of where you are right now? RL: Yeah. I don&amp;#039;t do things to find out about myself. I just like playing pretend. The business part of the business I just hate. I can&amp;#039;t imagine an actor who likes it, or a director or anybody.  ESQ: I want to talk about your process. For Killing Them Softly, did you read the book [1974&amp;#039;s Cogan&amp;#039;s Trade], or did you just pay strict attention to the script? RL: I didn&amp;#039;t read the book on this one. I didn&amp;#039;t read the book for Field of Dreams, either. I think sometimes it can inform what you&amp;#039;re doing, but there&amp;#039;s only so much they can put in, in script form, that I just concentrate more on. I did read Wiseguy, which then became Goodfellas. And I just played a character, Roy DeMeo [in The Iceman], who is an actual person. He was the head of a mafia crew, so that I read about, but this one I didn&amp;#039;t.  ESQ: And what best establishes the movie&amp;#039;s world for you? Rehearsal? Script? Direction? I know you don&amp;#039;t look at dailies. RL: Yeah, I don&amp;#039;t think I ever have. There are a lot of actors who will watch the monitors. They&amp;#039;ll do a scene, and then the director will look back to see if he got whatever he wanted. I just find it odd to sit there and watch yourself. But if you can be objective, I can see how it&amp;#039;s really useful as a tool, especially if you&amp;#039;re doing something physical. But you know, just describe it to me.  ESQ: Do you like to add anything of your own to the character \u2014 dialogue, mannerisms? RL: With any mannerisms or dialogue, you have to be careful you&amp;#039;re not just serving yourself. What happens with improving is a lot of times, if you&amp;#039;re not in the framework of the script, you&amp;#039;re just making everything easier so it fits you. It&amp;#039;s much more interesting and challenging to go to it, rather than it coming to you. I&amp;#039;m a big believer in doing the homework. I think the more you think about something, the more important it becomes, the more important it is to you, and the more important it will become to the audience. ESQ: Homework, huh? But how do you prepare for something like eating your own brain in Hannibal? RL: You imagine what you would do. I remember talking to Ridley [Scott]: &amp;quot;So, how are we going to do this?&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know.&amp;quot; He didn&amp;#039;t know. They had this animatronic exact likeness of me. He wanted the scene where Anthony [Hopkins] picks up the top of my head with me in the shot. But he said he wasn&amp;#039;t sure. So I started using my imagination, thinking, &amp;quot;Well, one, I&amp;#039;m awake.&amp;quot; I did research on that in terms of brain surgeries, and I actually watched some brain surgeries \u2014 just because it was fascinating; it didn&amp;#039;t really help. The biggest thing I learned is they need you to be awake to make sure they are in the right area. So I said, &amp;quot;All right, I&amp;#039;m awake. I obviously don&amp;#039;t feel it.&amp;quot; So I just pretended that the drug they gave me was something that made me feel giddy. That&amp;#039;s why I was laughing like I was out of it. That&amp;#039;s just imagination. Anything. I&amp;#039;ve never killed anybody. I&amp;#039;ve never been in a fight. It&amp;#039;s all imagination. It&amp;#039;s all pretending. ESQ: In another movie, Article 99, your role is all about thinking quickly on your feet, which is like acting. Is there a point you reach where you say, &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s only so much training I can do&amp;quot;? RL: Totally. For that one, I went to a lot of open-heart surgeries. I went so much because I was fascinated with what it was like in the operating room. The only thing I didn&amp;#039;t stay for was when they cracked open the chest \u2014 sawing the chest and then opening it. That was too much for me. I went so much the doctor asked me to scrub up. He said, &amp;quot;Here, do you want to touch her heart?&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Oh, my God, yeah.&amp;quot; And I went down there and touched this woman&amp;#039;s heart. That was a trip. ESQ: Was there anything you prepared more for than you would&amp;#039;ve thought? RL: I probably over-prepared, especially during the beginning of my career. I didn&amp;#039;t have to go to all these open-heart surgeries for weeks and weeks. At the end of the day, you&amp;#039;re just pretending that you&amp;#039;re doing the operation.  ESQ: Was that the case for Goodfellas? You probably hit your stride by then, no? RL: That was my fourth movie. There was a guy Marty got me who used to be a cop, and then he went into the mafia. Again, it&amp;#039;s fascinating to find out about these people&amp;#039;s lives. I just played a preacher in a movie [The Identical]. I would go to different types of churches just to watch how they did their sermons and everything. I never had read the Bible or anything, and I became really intrigued with it, where I couldn&amp;#039;t stop reading it. I&amp;#039;ve continued to this day. I just finished it a couple of months ago.  ESQ: Goodfellas never seems to go away, and for some actors, people won&amp;#039;t stop assuming that one role is who they are. As another example, after Something Wild, people seemed to assume you were actually an ex-con. RL: Yeah, and that was my first movie, so people hadn&amp;#039;t really seen me in anything. That always has an imprint. If it&amp;#039;s a good part in a good movie, people just have a tendency to remember that one thing. After that, I was trying to manipulate my career a lot, because I didn&amp;#039;t want to do anything that was going to typecast me. But after a while, you can&amp;#039;t help it. I did this movie, Dominick and Eugene, where I played a medical student, and that was really such a good movie.  ESQ: It&amp;#039;s on Netflix Instant. I just watched it, actually.  RL: Isn&amp;#039;t it a nice movie? Tom Hulce was great in it, too. Jamie Lee Curtis was great. It was really a sweet movie. It just didn&amp;#039;t get the distribution it needed. It was with a company, Orion, that&amp;#039;s no longer around.  ESQ: Do you worry about that stuff by now \u2014 that a company won&amp;#039;t push a movie to get an audience? RL: It&amp;#039;s a matter of if everyone gets behind it or not. I mean, I understand what the game is. A lot of it is the money. But it seems if they have to go in for a penny, they have to go in for a pound. Because why do the movie if you&amp;#039;re not going to put the money in for distribution? And now how they offset that is with video-on-demand before it even hits the theaters. I don&amp;#039;t care what anyone says \u2014 if you do a movie, you want people to see it. So you do everything you can, but at the end of the day... Like Cloud Atlas \u2014 nobody saw it. That was a big-budget movie, wasn&amp;#039;t it? ESQ: It was. Something like $100 million. Opening weekend was about $9 million, unfortunately. It was especially said because they put a lot of their own money into it. RL: Who put their own money into it? ESQ: The Wachowskis. Andy and Lana. RL: Oh, I see. Really, they put their own money into it? Or they gave back their salary? ESQ: No, they put money into the production. RL: Wow. ESQ: A lot of the new movies you&amp;#039;re making are with first-time filmmakers or filmmakers who aren&amp;#039;t well-known. Is there anyone we should be taking more notice of? RL: This movie I just did, The Identical, is a first-time director [Dustin Marcellino]. I hope this movie does well so he gets the opportunity to keep making movies. I was going to say Narc, but everybody knows who Joe Carnahan is. He&amp;#039;s already off and running.  ESQ: Do you watch your movies when you&amp;#039;re done with them? RL: Some I do. Some you just want to see how it turns out. Maybe once or twice, when there is a premiere. Tonight, I&amp;#039;ll probably watch Killing Them Softly, but only because I&amp;#039;ll be with my friends from New Jersey \u2014 I live in L.A. now. It&amp;#039;s always fun to watch things with them, while they&amp;#039;re watching it, leaning over and talking. I think I&amp;#039;ve seen Goodfellas two times. I did see it less than a year ago. There was an Aruba film festival, and I took my thirteen-year-old daughter. I watched Goodfellas with my daughter. I hadn&amp;#039;t seen it since the premiere twenty-two years ago. Again, that was to share it with her.  ESQ: Did you see any new things you hadn&amp;#039;t before in Goodfellas? RL: I thought it was a good movie. It wasn&amp;#039;t with all the hype, of what it&amp;#039;s become after those years, being on TV all the time.  ESQ: You weren&amp;#039;t watching because of its reputation. RL: Right, but I could see why people love it. It&amp;#039;s a fascinating slice of that lifestyle, and the fact that it&amp;#039;s a true story and people actually did those things. So I said, &amp;quot;Wow, this is a good movie.&amp;quot; PLUS: Read a 2003 Interview with Ray Liotta About Identity &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/interviews/a17000/ray-liotta-interview-14793132/>