Ray Liotta on The Son of No One, Working with Al Pacino, and Eating Brains in Hannibal

A quick scan of Ray Liotta’s filmography indicates that the 56-year-old actor has played tons of officers, captains and detectives. He sticks to that milieu in The Son of No One, a Sundance-debuted thriller about a young cop (Channing Tatum) who is assigned to protect the rough Queens neighborhood where he grew up. As Captain Marion Mathers, Liotta works authoritatively alongside a veteran detective (Al Pacino), even after an anonymous source reveals new information about unsolved murders and a potential police cover-up. Movieline phoned Liotta to talk about the new movie, memories of Goodfellas and traumatizing moviegoers in Hannibal. You’ve played a lot of hard-bitten, gritty roles over the years. Does that get easier as time goes on? By gritty do you mean — like a maniac? That too. That kind of gritty? In a sense it gets easier. You hold on so tight when you first get started, and when I started my career, I’d never even been in a fight before. I remember always trying to hold on to it — keeping [the mania] in my head. But then you learn that just driving the work gets you so angry. You don’t have to hold onto it. You can trust yourself, that it is going to be there, that you’re going to react the way you’re supposed to react if you do your homework. It takes a while before you start trusting yourself, I have found. Channing Tatum is considerably less maniacal on screen. Was it fun to prod him and wind him up during scenes? Yeah. Channing’s really good. The good thing about him is he’s really simple — and I don’t mean like a simple person. The way he acts is very simple. He keeps it closer to the vest than some of the characters I play. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie, but even when he’s getting a little wound up — though do we do push his buttons towards the end there — it’s always fun playing that way. Nothing was more fun than being with Pacino. That was really a dream. I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of really, really good actors like Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Anthony Hopkins, De Niro and Pacino was always somebody on my list. He was just great. I loved it. Pacino plays a captain and you play a detective. Did it trip you out to play alongside Pacino as a contemporary in your first movie with him? No, because I get more excited. Even when I did Goodfellas, I was more excited than tripped out. The first week of rehearsal for Goodfellas, you see Bob [De Niro] and Joe [Pesci] working it out and figuring it through. Some suggestions work, some don’t. So you really see behind the curtain, if you will. We’re used to seeing the actors on screen all worked out with lighting and music, but when you’re doing it, some takes work, some don’t, sometimes they drop a line, sometimes they don’t. By this time when I worked with Al, I was used to seeing that. It’s a human being who’s just an actor. They work it out like everybody else. The better the actor, the more they experiment and try and don’t hang on. With Al, since he’s so theater-oriented, he likes long takes. With some actors, they just want a minute or two. They can’t even sustain it for that long. With Al, we sustained it as long as we could. Plus, he’s just a great guy. So it seems like you enjoy taking advantage of the unique acting opportunities within the medium of film. What other actors work that way? Robert Duvall is like that. Very present and in the moment. Joe Pesci. One of the best experiences I had was with Tom Hulce in a movie called Dominic and Eugene. There’ve been a few I’ve worked with who manipulate a lot, and they play around. It’s more “movie acting” as opposed to experiencing something between acting and cut. You’ve worked very consistently. How do you stay motivated? Mostly the past few years I’ve been doing supporting parts in high-profile movies. So there’s that. I’m only working one to two to three weeks on a movie. The better the movie, the less they pay — unless you’re really at a certain level. Sometimes you’ll do things, to be honest, just to make a living. Those are really challenging. I mean, I approach the material the same no matter what it is, no matter what the part. But sometimes, some directors don’t know their ass from their elbow. That is frustrating. Did you take pleasure in traumatizing people with the brain-eating scene in Hannibal? [Laughs.] It traumatized me too! I knew when I got it, I said — with Ridley Scott directing — I knew it was going to be realistic. I remember when it first opened, I was working in Toronto and I was hearing about people walking out or getting sick. A couple people fainted? It’s always good to have an impact. Do you find that many of your older movies have a second life? For instance, I seem to hear about Something Wild more often now. It has quirky cachet. Yeah. No question. Not only is it people who saw it in the theater to begin with, but younger audiences see them too. Their parents or friends turn them on to the movies. That’s especially true for Goodfellas and Field of Dreams — as young as 12 years old, even now. Which means that parents are being a little lax. Do you want to do more comedy? Swear to God, I think Heartbreakers is hilarious. It’s not something that people really think of me for, but I have a really sweet movie called Snowmen that opened this week in limited release. I have a son with cancer and I’m trying to pay the bills, and I sell used cars and do these crazy commercials — so there’s a lot of humor in that, though it’s really heartfelt. I was really disappointed that it didn’t get better distribution, but hopefully it’ll do better in video. Lastly, we do a feature at Movieline called ‘My Favorite Scene.’ What’s your favorite movie scene ever? For some reason when you said that, On the Waterfront popped into my head. I love the scene when Brando first talks to Eva Marie Saint. When she drops the glove and picks it up, and they’re talking for the first time. I loved that scene. Very well done. Do you think Brando is still influential? I think to the generation before mine, more so than for Al or me. I don’t know how it is for people now, but him, James Dean, Montgomery Clift — it was that naturalistic way of doing things as opposed to what they were doing in the ’30s and ’40s. Although when you think about it, Spencer Tracy was doing the same thing. He didn’t get as much credit for it. Henry Fonda? A lot of those guys were really simple. But with Brando, it’s about the rebellion. When you play a bad, edgy guy, it just stands out in people’s mind. I know actors who’ve done both, and 90 percent of the time people bring up the movies where they’re just edgy. I don’t know why that is, but they do.