Ray Liotta Checks Into ER
Better have your box of Kleenex handy if you watch tonight's episode of ER (10 pm/ET on NBC). Goodfellas star Ray Liotta stops in as boozy no-goodnik Charlie Metcalf, who arrives at County General with a complaint of intestinal woe. He thinks it's merely a stomachache, but in actuality, he's drunk himself into a potentially fatal case of liver failure. Critics who've prescreened the episode already have started up Emmy buzz.
"He did something bad in his life," Liotta hints about Charlie. "He ended up in jail and got mixed up in drugs and alcohol, but at his core, he's a good guy. He's just made a lot of mistakes. As he's lying on his deathbed, he's trying to reconcile and reconnect with his son that he lost contact with."
The 48-year-old actor — who admits he'd never seen an ER episode before they sent him the script — took this TV gig purely for the challenge. "Acting is pretend," he says. "I like doing things where [the character is] a little complicated and there are different levels of humanity that you're going through. I relied on my imagination. I just read the script and thought, 'What it would be like to go through this?'"
You'd think ER would be a cakewalk for the man who had the top of his head screwed off so Anthony Hopkins could sauté his brain in Hannibal. But the hospital drama had its own unexpected thrills and chills to offer.
"The hardest thing is when they take you off [life] support and you're left there knowing that you're waiting to die," Liotta says. "All the actors are so good on that show and the set is so realistic, you really feel like you're in the emergency room. That got to me more than anything. To make death as real as possible was kind of creepy, to tell you the truth.
"It really makes you think about the fact that you are gonna die," he adds with a slightly nervous chuckle. "It's not something you think about. What makes it great and compelling is that it's gonna happen to everybody."
Speaking of demanding television gigs, Liotta's next project is his upcoming NBC crime drama
Criminal Behavior. According to Peacock press materials, he'll play a fugitive-hunting Los Angeles detective with a turbulent personal life. "Thank God there
is a personal life involved," he cracks. "Otherwise, it would just be a procedural show. That's something we want to stay away from. We want to humanize the [lead] character more than a lot of other shows that are on TV now. I didn't know they were using the word 'turbulent.' Since I haven't seen a script yet, I guess I'll be surprised!"
