Movies

Raymond Allen Liotta (Italian: ; December 18, 1954 – May 26, 2022) was an American actor. He first gained attention for his role in the film Something Wild (1986), which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination. He was best known for his portrayals of Shoeless Joe Jackson in the film Field of Dreams (1989) and Henry Hill in the film Goodfellas (1990). Liotta appeared in numerous other films, including Unlawful Entry (1992), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), John Q. (2002), Identity (2003), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), and Cocaine Bear (2023).

He won a Primetime Emmy Award for his guest role in the television series ER in 2005. He starred as Frank Sinatra in the television film The Rat Pack (1998) and Lorca in the miniseries Texas Rising (2015), both of which earned him Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and also starred in the series Shades of Blue (2016–2018) and Black Bird (2022). He also had a prominent voice acting role as Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002).

Early life
Liotta was born in Newark, New Jersey, on December 18, 1954. Having been abandoned at an orphanage, he was adopted at the age of six months by township clerk Mary (née Edgar) and auto-parts store owner Alfred Liotta. His adoptive parents were of Italian and Scottish descent. Alfred was a personnel director and president of a local Democratic Party club. His adoptive parents each unsuccessfully ran for local political office; he recalled attending parades to hand out flyers for his father's run.

Liotta had a sister, Linda, who was also adopted. He said that he knew he was adopted as a young child, and presented a show-and-tell report on it for kindergarten. He hired a private detective to locate his biological Irish mother in the 2000s, from whom he learned his family was mostly of Scottish descent. He had one biological sister, one biological half-brother, and five biological half-sisters.

Liotta grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Union, New Jersey, although his family was not especially religious. They attended church and he received first communion and was confirmed, but the family did not pray much. He occasionally used prayer in his daily life, telling an interviewer, "... if I'm in a fix I'll pray ... if I'm feeling uncomfortable about something I'll say "Our Father's" and "Hail Marys" to this day." In 1973, he graduated from Union High School and was later named to the Union High School Hall of Fame.