2. Ray Liotta as Henry Hill – Goodfellas
Goodfellas is one of the most celebrated gangster movies of all time, based on the true crime bookWiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi. The book documents the life of Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, who grew up with eight siblings in the rundown East New York section of Brooklyn. Mobsters would meet each other on his street and at just eleven years old, he began to run errands for them. It was through his early job that he met Lucchese family associate, James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke (Robert De Niro). Since 1956, he began to profit from crime.
Burke owned a bar called Robert’s Lounge and it was here they had a welcome home party for made man William “Billy Batts” Bentvena after he had spent sixteen years inside. Burke and Billy Batts were not on good terms after Burke took over a loan shark business belonging to Batts during his stretch inside. Instead of returning the business to Batts, Burke had decided to kill him. Exactly as it plays out in the movie, Batts asks Tommy DeSimone, played by Joe Pesci, if he still shines shoes. DeSimone told Hill and Burke, “I’m gonna kill that f***”. SEE ALSO: 12 Celebrities who spend too much cash in strip joints – #1 will leave you in a big shock! (With Pictures)
DeSimone shot Batts whilst Burke held him down, then the three of them took the body to dispose of it. Hill recalls driving and hearing banging from the trunk and he realized Batts was still alive. He remembers, “We’re on our way to bury him and he wasn’t even dead”. DeSimone finished him off, properly this time, with a shovel as he lay in the trunk.
Henry Hill praised Ray Liotta for his performance in Goodfellas. He captures Hill’s violent streak when he beats a boy with the handle of his gun until his nose breaks after he touched his girlfriend and eventual wife, Karen. Although Liotta didn’t meet Hill before the filming, he told press at the Tribeca Film Festival this year, “(Martin Scorsese) didn’t want me to talk to him before (the movie). So after the movie, I got a call to meet him at a bowling alley in the valley in California, with his brother. So I go to the bowling alley and there’s Henry – I knew him from pictures. And the first thing he says to me was, ‘Thanks for making me not look like a scumbag’”. Hill passed away in 2012 aged 69-years-old after a long battle with illness.
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