For Ray Liotta, playing the tough fella is still good in Observe and Report

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      LOS ANGELES—Ray Liotta was typecast as a tough guy in movies after he starred in the Oscar-nominated Goodfellas. Almost 20 years and more than 40 films later, he’s still playing the role on-screen and doesn’t mind staying in character during interviews. In an L.A. hotel room, he says that he doesn’t like auditioning for roles and is particularly upset when young directors put him through his paces. A case in point is Jody Hill, his director on Observe and Report. In the film, Liotta plays Det. Harrison, a veteran police officer sent to a local mall after a flasher is spotted in the parking lot. The movie opens April 10.


      Watch the trailer for Observe and Report

      “I wanted to do the film but Jody didn’t want me to do it, so I figured I had to audition,” he says. “There is this new trend where you have these little punks who want you to come in and audition, and that’s what you have to do.”

      In his defence, Hill says that until Liotta auditioned for the role, he had seen the part as being one that would be a better fit for a young actor than a veteran. “I pictured Harrison as a kid, a Justin Timberlake kind of guy just learning the ropes. But when I saw him read for it, he was poking [star] Seth Rogen. When I saw that, I felt like I had seen something amazing and spontaneous and crazy, so at that point it was a done deal.”

      Comedies wouldn’t seem to be the most natural fit for an actor who has spent his career playing rough-and-tumble characters. Liotta says that although he has never perceived himself as being funny, he felt that if he played the role of a tough cop seriously while everything around him was absurd, it would come across as humorous.

      “I don’t think I am funny at all. There was a line in the script when I first read it that isn’t in there now, where the character says, ”˜I drew the short straw,’ to explain why a guy like him is at the mall. The last place Harrison would want to be was somewhere that someone was exposing himself. He wants to solve murders, and so there are a hundred places he would rather be than in a mall. So to me, it was just a matter of playing a cop who is serious about his job, who is sent to a mall looking for a guy with a little dick and a guy who is stealing shoes. Hopefully, the humour comes from that.”

      Although his film experience is equal to that of the other key cast members combined (in addition to Rogen and Liotta, the film stars Anna Faris and Michael Peña), he didn’t have to worry about being treated better than anyone else. “They certainly didn’t treat me like a legend,” he says. “They treated me like a production assistant.”

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