As soon as I became proactive in producing my own stuff, I started getting other roles.
Because you're sitting here asking me questions like I have something to say; there is something unimportant about it.
I didn't like some of the movies that were coming into me.
I just finished Narc, which was a really heavy duty, raw, independent.
I know when I go to a movie I want to experience something, whether to laugh, to cry, to feel bad.
I mean, I understand that, I guess, it brings people to the movie, but I hope that I get really, really huge so that I don't have to do this anymore.
I think drug movies free the director to make intense films.
I think people like watching edgy things.
I think that if you can achieve a balance, then you appease a lot of yourself and your career and what it takes to maintain in this business for a while.
I wanted to go that way and really get proactive with my career - take some control in it and redirect it in a direction that I liked.
I was looking to become more proactive with my career because I wasn't crazy with some of the scripts I was getting - this was before Blow and Hannibal - so I decided to start my own production company.
I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth.
I'm getting older, I wanted to have that opportunity to play someone who goes from his twenties to someone dying of cancer in his sixties.
I'm in my forties now, too - one of the great things about those movies was the chance to work with Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, and Anthony Hopkins.
I've never stolen, I never did anything.
I've only been in one fight in my whole life... in 7th grade, yet everyone thinks I'm a maniac.
In college, I started out doing musicals and Shakespeare.
My wife read Narc as well and was really into it.
Not like Chinese food, where you eat it and then you feel hungry an hour later.
So I decided to form a production company with my wife and our partner Diane.
So, you need to balance it out with bigger and smaller movies.
Some movies you go to and you spend a lot of money between popcorn, parking, or the movie itself, and I really feel that this is worth its money.
Something Wild was my first movie.
Suddenly playing the charming bad guy was my thing.
The first script I got was Narc and I really responded to it; it reminded me of a '70s type movie, I really liked the characters, I didn't anticipate the ending.
The Rat Pack was the piece that really kicked me out of that little funk that I was in and then Ted called me up and asked me if I wanted to be the dad in Blow.
Then my career started changing, I got Hannibal and Heartbreakers, Blow and John Q, so I felt really comfortable taking that chance with a first-timer.
Today some actors get a little full of themselves about what they're doing.
Well, for Blow I had to age from 20 to 60, starting out in shape and then later putting on fat pads.
When I found out Cusack was involved, I liked that a lot.
When I read Copland, I really wanted Stallone's part.
You could just do independent movies, but I like bigger kind of studio movies, at least some of them.
You don't do anything thinking that it's going to stick.
You know, it was a small, independent movie and with Paramount becoming involved, it was obviously a good thing, but you can't put a round peg in a square hole.
His best friend is actor Josh Taylor. They met when they were both on the tv soap opera Days of Our Lives.
Ray shares the same birthday as Brad Pitt, Katie Holmes, Casper Van Dien, and Steven Speilberg.
Antoine Fuqua, the director wanted to cast Ray in his crime epic Tru Blu along with Denzel Washington and Benicio Del Toro but now the project is defunct.
Ray gained about 20 pounds and wore small lifts to appear even more imposing while playing Henry Oak in the movie Narc.
The British rock band Linoleum recorded a song called Ray Liotta which appeared on their 1997 album "Dissent."
Ray dated Heidi von Beltz for a year.
Ray went to the Union High School in Union, New Jersey. He was inducted into the school's Hall of Fame during the 1992-1993 school year.
Ray turned down the role of Mac Taylor on CSI: NY.
He is 6' tall.
Last name is pronounced Lee-oh-ta.
He voiced Tommy Vercetti in the hit game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
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