Why Alec Baldwin Is Glad He Lost Ray Liotta’s Goodfellas Role

34 years later, Ray Liotta’s best movie is still often considered to be “Goodfellas,” where he plays the amoral mob associate Henry Hill as his increasingly dark life of crime unfolds. It’s likely the role Liotta will be best remembered for; as he once recalled in a Deadline interview, “‘Goodfellas,’ really, it’s been like 28, 30 years later and I have kids coming up to me as if the movie had just come out. These kids who see it when they’re old enough. That’s just unbelievable.”

Before Liotta was cast as Henry Hill, however, another actor nearly got the role: Alec Baldwin, who at that point had not yet starred in “Glengarry Glen Ross” but had starred in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice.” In a 2015 interview with Howard Stern, Baldwin explained how he had “went to Scorsese’s apartment” to audition, didn’t get the part, and later talked to Liotta about it at a party. As Baldwin recalled:

“I said to Ray, ‘You know Ray, a lot of times guys get parts that I go up for and I don’t get the part and I think to myself — I think I would have been better in that part. But you’re the one example of someone where I go that’s not true. Ray, no one could have done that better than you.’ And he reaches over and goes, ‘I agree.'”

Maybe it’s just because I’ve watched too much “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live,” leaving me to associate Baldwin more with comedies instead of dramas, but I tend to agree that Liotta was a better fit for the role. Part of the appeal of Henry Hill in “Goodfellas” is that Liotta gives him a likable charm to contrast with his terrible deeds; it’s that push and pull between liking him and being appalled that makes the movie so thrilling. Baldwin, meanwhile, rarely plays likable guys; from “Glengarry Glen Ross” to “The Cat in the Hat,” he seems better suited to portraying sleazy characters you love to hate, not characters you hate to love.

The good news for Baldwin is that missing this role was hardly the end of his career. In fact, he’s since gotten more leading roles than Liotta, and even hosted “Saturday Night Live” 16 more times. (Granted, there’s a good chance Liotta just wasn’t that into that sort of thing.) Baldwin also got his chance to star in a Scorsese movie with “The Aviator” in 2004 and then again with “The Departed” in 2006. Liotta, meanwhile, was oddly never cast in another Scorsese film after “Goodfellas.”

Baldwin working for Scorsese must’ve been a rewarding experience for him, as he’s had nothing but great things to say about the director throughout his career. In a 2020 interview talking about Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” Baldwin said, “I was very emotional. I got a tear in my eye at the end. […] I watched the film, and I thought, ‘We’re never gonna see these guys do this again. This is it.'”

Baldwin added, “Scorsese, in his documentary about American film, says, ‘If you remember the plot of a movie, it’s not a great movie. You remember moments.’ And how many moments do we remember, these guys? You just cry.”