Close encounters of the celebrity kind

 

Ray Liotta in “Something Wild.” (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios photo via IMDB). Amber Heard and me at the 2018 Maui Film Festival at Wailea. (Maui Film Festival photo.)

No one had ever heard of Ray Liotta the first time I interviewed him.

It was 1986. He and a couple of other young actors early in their careers – Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith – were in New Orleans on a press junket for “Something Wild.” The comedy thriller wasn't set in New Orleans but director Jonathan Demme – an aficionado of American culture – had picked the destination as an excuse to spend the weekend enjoying some storied N'awlins' food and music.

“Something Wild” was a quirky romp in which straight-laced Daniels gets waylaid by free-spirited Griffith before her loose cannon husband shows up to change the mood entirely.

Liotta played the loose cannon.

He was such a ticking time bomb on screen, it came as news (with junket journalists frantically checking our press kits to find out who he was) to discover Liotta's previous claim to fame was playing cherub-faced Joey Perrini on a long-running TV soap opera “Another World.”

As creepy as he was in “Something Wild,” Liotta was just the opposite when I sat down to interview him. Funny, self-effacing, he acted more surprised by his newfound success than entitled to it.

Lovable … yeah, that's the word.

He was the same two years later when I interviewed him in San Francisco on a press tour for a touching drama called “Dominick and Eugene.” He played Eugene. His co-star Dominick was played by Tom Hulce – “you know, the Amadeus guy.”

No pretenses, Liotta was just a street-smart, funny guy from Newark. He was still a largely unknown quantity in the movie world in that moment before being thrust onto the A-list with “Field of Dreams” followed by his greatest hit, Martin Scorsese's “Goodfellas,” When Anthony Hopkins wasn't doing unspeakable things to him in “Hannibal,” Liotta spent the next decades mostly playing cops and criminals on screens big and small.

He would become the textbook definition of a screen tough guy. But regardless of who he was beating up, shaking down or otherwise busting on-screen, he still had that lovable thing going for him. His leading man days were brief, but he was bound for something better – an iconic, one-of-a-kind screen persona in the same league as Christopher Walken or Harry Dean Stanton.

It was sad to learn of his death at age 67 Thursday in his sleep in the Dominican Republican where he was shooting a new movie. But it also brought a smile, remembering that funny, unassuming, Jersey guy getting such a kick from life itself.

Eulogizing Ray Liotta provides the briefest of respites from heartbreak elsewhere in the news these days. Distraction is what actors are here for, after all. But when they signed those lucrative contracts, most of them didn't notice the fine print about it being a full-time job. They had just committed to act out life for the rest of us, 24/7, whether the cameras were rolling or not.

Case in point: Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. They're the latest prey snared in the acting trap, replacing Will Smith as targets for all the digital snipers out there in social media land.

Try as you might, you can't get away from the lurid details of the Depps' death-defying two-year marriage now awaiting verdicts in defamation suits and countersuits for $50- and $100-million dollars respectively. 

Pondering the pair seems especially interesting to New York Times columnists who normally write about weightier matters. The columnists vie with each other fishing for metaphors – Access Hollywood Trump-style male abuser vs. pilloried female victim, Hester Prynn as a Vogue cover girl. They ponder why Johnny fares so much better with fans than Amber does …

Except neither litigant emerges squeaky clean from any of the courtroom claims, which set new lows for prurience by the day.

Funny, I realize – Amber didn't mention any of this stuff last time we talked.

It was 2018 at the Maui Film Festival at Wailea. She was that year's Shining Star Award recipient, and I interviewed her on-stage at the Celestial Cinema. An audience of thousands watched the award tribute in the festival's starlit amphitheater.

Her ex-husband was off-limits for the interview. Those were the ground rules from festival staff. That's how it worked. Celebrity journalism is to real journalism what backyard touch football is to the NFL.

Instead of Johnny, we talked about her new film (“Aquaman”); her Texas upbringing like the role she played in “Friday Night Lights”; her latest endorsement contract (she had just been named a “global ambassador” for L'oreal); and her varied philanthropies and causes, including SAMS, the Syrian American Medical Society.

Attending the festival with her sister Whitney (destined to be a key witness in the case), Amber Heard was personable, articulate, funny. The interview went well. She gave me a big hug at the end.

In the media frenzy surrounding the case, a friend recently came upon video of the interview. What was Amber Heard like? he quizzed me.

Ha. As though I have a clue. She's an actress. Pretending is her job … for life.

A lot has happened since 2018, and being reminded of the interview leads to inevitable, impossible longing – if only you could return to that sweet, simpler balmy night …

I wonder if Amber Heard is having that longing these days.