Goodfella, badfella, betterfella

Ray Liotta must have felt that his life had begun to echo that of his most famous role, Henry Hill.

Like the true-life gangster from Martin Scorsese?s 1990 mob classic, GoodFellas, Liotta has experienced a sharp rise and fall, Hollywood seemingly no less vicious than the deadly world of New York wise guys.

Fading were the memories of his startling 1986 debut in Something Wild, when he roared across the screen as Melanie Griffiths?s psychotic husband, and of his ethereal baseball player, Shoeless Joe Jackson, in Field of Dreams.

Instead, an increasingly dismal series of films followed GoodFellas: run-of-the-mill domestic thriller Unlawful Entry; future-set actioner No Escape; kooky Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Corrina, Corrina; Con Air rip-off Turbulence; dismal medical thriller Unforgettable; and, shudderingly, kiddie film Operation Dumbo Drop.

Even the promise of a return to form, following the 1997 film Cop Land, led only to a starring role opposite Miss Piggy in Muppets From Space. ?It was very tough and very disappointing,? he says when we meet, his rapid-fire New Jersey accent untainted by Los Angeles life.

?I?m an extremely competitive person, and I would watch movies that other actors were in and feel that I could do what they were doing. You just ride it out and do whatever you can to get through it. I kept studying for the tide to turn, and luckily it?s turned.?

From nowhere, Liotta has returned with a series of sparkling performances in some of the year?s most talked-about movies. In Ridley Scott?s Hannibal he played FBI jerk Paul Krendler, contributing to the film?s infamous final scene, which saw Liotta?s cranium sliced open and his frontal lobes pan-fried (?My immediate reaction was that it was disgusting and gross, but I knew people would remember it,? he says now).

In cocaine yarn Blow, he played Johnny Depp?s father, ageing 20 years in the course of the film. Forthcoming is hostage drama John Q, in which he plays a police chief out to stop Denzel Washington from holding patients and staff on a hospital ward at gunpoint.

For the moment, though, he can be seen in Heartbreakers, a sharptoothed comedy co-starring Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt as a mother-daughter con-artist team.

?I don?t think it?s a ?comeback?, but a ?welcome back?,? he says. ?I went through a period where I wasn?t getting the types of movies that I would have liked. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, these came. There was no rhyme or reason. Other than, I don?t mind doing the hustle.?

While he scored his Hannibal role by approaching Ridley Scott at his local gym and professing a desire to work with him, Heartbreakers came only after Liotta, who plays a car-dealer suckered into marriage and then taken to the divorce courts, auditioned for the part.

?What is amazing is, no matter how much you?ve done, you can still be insecure,? he explains. ?When I left, I was like ?Did they like me? Did I get it?? It was like my first audition. It was humbling, but it keeps you on your toes. I don?t mind that. The relief was that I didn?t have to go to work and beat somebody up every day.?