Ray Liotta, who created intense, memorable characters in “Goodfellas,” “Field of Dreams” and other films as well as on television, died in his sleep on Wednesday night or early Thursday in the Dominican Republic. He was 67.
His publicist, Jennifer Allen, said that he was filming a movie, “Dangerous Waters,” and died in his hotel room. She said the cause was not yet known.
Mr. Liotta was known primarily for having played Joey Perrini on the soap opera “Another World,” a character he once called “the nicest guy in the world,” when he landed an entirely different kind of role in the 1986 comic crime story “Something Wild.” His friend Melanie Griffith leaned on the film's director, Jonathan Demme, to consider him, and he got the role of her character’s menacing husband, an ex-con.
“Mr. Liotta, a newcomer, nearly walks off with his sections of the film,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review in The New York Times — and suddenly he was in demand for such parts.
“I had offers for every crazy guy around,” Mr. Liotta told The Los Angeles Times in 1990.
