Ray Liotta will be honoured by his New Jersey hometown following death last week.
Ray Liotta's hometown is working a tribute to the late actor
The ‘Goodfellas’ star passed away in his sleep at the age of 67 while in the Dominican Republic filming ‘Dangerous Waters’ and in the wake of his sudden passing he will be commemorated by Union Township, the town he was raised in after he was born in Newark in 1954.
Manuel Figueiredo, the city’s mayor, told TMZ that they were weighing up a number of options to best celebrate Ray while giving his family enough time to grieve their loss.
One of the suggestions is to rename one of the local baseball fields after him as an ode to his role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in the 1989 film ‘Field of Dreams’.
Ray - whose parents were pillars of the community as his mother Marty was the Township Clerk and his father Alfred ran a shop and served a President of a local Democratic club - was inducted into the Union High School Hall of Fame and took part in the town’s Annual Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony.
Liotta is survived by his fiancé Jacy Nittolo and his daughter Karsen and following his death tributes poured in from Hollywood in memory of him.
Lorraine Bracco - who starred opposite Ray’s character Henry Hill as his on-screen wife Karen in the 1900 Martin Scorsese Mafia drama 'Goodfellas' - wrote on Twitter: “I can be anywhere in the world people will come up tell me their favorite movie is ‘Goodfellas’. Then they always ask what was the best part of making that movie. My response has always been the same… Ray Liotta.”
Jamie Lee Curtis tweeted: “His work as an actor showed his complexity as a human being. A gentle man. So sad to hear.”
‘The Sopranos’ creator David Chase - who directed Ray in the movie prequel ‘The Many Saints of Newark’ - said: “'This is a massive, unexpected shock. I have been an admirer of Ray’s work since I saw him in Something Wild, a movie he wrenched by the tail.”
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