Liotta at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival in CanadaĪfter college, Liotta moved to New York City. He performed in musicals, including Cabaret, Dames at Sea, Oklahoma, and The Sound of Music, at the University of Miami's Jerry Herman Ring Theatre. Liotta attended the University of Miami, where he studied acting and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1978. 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. He occasionally used prayer in his daily life, telling an interviewer, ". They attended church and he received first communion and was confirmed, but the family did not pray much. Liotta grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Union, New Jersey, although his family was not especially religious. He had one biological sister, one biological half-brother, and five biological half-sisters. He hired a private detective to locate his biological mother in the 2000s, from whom he learned that he was mostly of Scottish descent. He said that he knew he was adopted as a young child, and presented a show-and-tell report on it for kindergarten. Liotta had a sister, Linda, who was also adopted. His adoptive parents each unsuccessfully ran for local political office he recalled attending parades to hand out flyers for his father's run. Alfred was a personnel director and president of a local Democratic Party club.
His adoptive parents were of Italian and Scottish descent. 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. Liotta was born in Newark, New Jersey, on December 18, 1954. He was also known as Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002).
He also starred in the drama series Shades of Blue (2016–2018) with Jennifer Lopez. He starred as Frank Sinatra in the television film The Rat Pack (1998) and Lorca and Tom Mitchell in Texas Rising (2015) for which he earned Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. He was also known for his television work in ER for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2004. He continued to star in films such as Unlawful Entry (1992), No Escape (1994), Cop Land (1997) Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Kill the Messenger (2014), Marriage Story (2019), and the Sopranos prequel theatrical film The Many Saints of Newark (2021).
Liotta first gained attention for his role as Ray Sinclair in the Jonathan Demme film Something Wild (1986), for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture nomination.
He was a Primetime Emmy Award winning actor and received nominations for a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He was most known for his roles as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989) and Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990). Raymond Allen Liotta ( Italian: Decem– May 26, 2022) was an American actor and film producer.