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Martin Scorsese says he regrets not having found the time to work with Ray Liotta again, having only collaborated with him on his acclaimed crime drama Goodfellas.
As part of a heartfelt tribute to the late actor, who famously played mobster Henry Hill in the movie opposite Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, the filmmaker revealed that he and Liotta had conjured up "many plans" to finally reunite onscreen over the years – but "the timing was always off or the project wasn't quite right."
"I regret that now," Scorsese admitted in The Guardian post. "When I watched Ray as the divorce lawyer in Marriage Story – he's genuinely scary in the role, which is precisely why he's so funny – I remember feeling that I wanted to work with him again at this point in his life, to explore the gravity in his presence, so different from the young, sprightly actor he was when I met him.
"I wish I'd had the chance to see him just once more, too — to tell him just how much the work we did together meant to me," he added. "But maybe he knew that. I hope so."
Since Goodfellas release in 1990, Scorsese has worked with De Niro again, in titles such as Cape Fear, Casino, and The Audition. He directed both De Niro and Pesci most recently in Netflix's The Irishman. Recalling his time working with Liotta, Scorsese explained: "The word 'fearless' is used quite often to describe actors, and with good reason: actors need to be fearless.
"They have to jump in and just go, and they have to stumble and fail and risk appearing ridiculous as they're finding their way into a role. That's just part of the work. On Goodfellas, we were working improvisationally in most scenes, and many members of the team had known each other and worked together for years, including my mother and my father. Into that walked the new guy, Ray Liotta, and he never missed a beat. It felt like we'd worked together for years."
Liotta died in his sleep on May 26, 2022. He was 67.
