ACTING, Ray Liotta admits, is not brain surgery.”No pun intended,” he adds with a sly grin.If you’ve seen “Hannibal,” you get the pun – it refers, of course, to a doozy of a scene toward the end which has carved itself indelibly into the minds of the millions of moviegoers who have made the gory sequel the year’s first blockbuster.
The scene’s a talker, and the phenomenal success of “Hannibal” has put the 45-year-old Newark, N.J., native back on the map after the decade-long slump that followed his breakout performance as mobster Henry Hill in Martin Scorcese’s classic Mafia film “GoodFellas.”
“My dream now is to just consistently work,” Liotta says. “This is a really unique situation that doesn’t come along much – a sequel of this magnitude with this much attention.
“I had a lull where there was only one [film] coming a year. But when it rains it pours – it’s kind of crazy.”
The first drop in the cinematic deluge hits theaters Friday. In the broad comedy “Heartbreakers,” Liotta plays a secretly sentimental chop-shop entrepreneur who falls prey to the feminine wiles of Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s manipulative con-artists.
“Hopefully it will offset some of the [bad guy] roles I’ve done,” he says of his typecasting as a reckless psycho following movies like “Something Wild,” “Unlawful Entry” and “Copland.”
If that doesn’t work, the upcoming “Blow,” in which he plays Johnny Depp’s milquetoast dad, and the touching drama “A Rumor of Angels,” with Vanessa Redgrave, should do the trick.
Off-screen, Liotta is charming and earnest, acting more like a film fan who can’t believe his luck in sharing the screen with his idols.
“I’ve just had a great run of movies where I got to work with Anthony Hopkins, Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman and these were guys I’ve always really, really looked up to,” he says. “It’s a real learning experience to see people of their age and experience, and the ease in which they get up and do it.”
It was Liotta’s veneration of director Ridley Scott that landed him the plum role in “Hannibal” – and reignited his career.
“I would see him in the gym and always wave and say hello,” he says. “One day he was walking out as I was walking in – I never wanted to bother him while he was working out – and I said, ‘I love your work, if you have anything, I’d love to do it.’
“I’ve done that a lot of times with directors and it hasn’t worked, but in this instance it did.” And how.
Liotta’s now working non-stop. He has “John Q,” with Denzel Washington and Robert Duvall, coming out in November, and he’s filming “Point of Origin” for HBO and a movie called “Narc,” which he is co-producing with his actress wife Michelle Grace, who also stars along with the couple’s 3-year-old daughter Karsen.
Having haunted the fringes of Hollywood’s inner sanctum for so long, Liotta remains keenly aware of the fickle nature of success.
“It’s pretty much a matter of where you fit in the food chain of Hollywood,” he says. “It’s not a meritocracy – it’s just based on how your movies are opening.”