Ray Liotta Once Turned Down a Meeting with Tim Burton About Batman: ‘I Was Stupid’

Ray Liotta was once hesitant to take a role in a comic book movie.

In a posthumous interview with Liotta published by Deadline on Wednesday, the actor, who died at 67 in May 2022, recalled turning down a meeting with director Tim Burton to discuss the Batman movie.

“I’ve been able to hang on to keep doing these movies because it’s been hard for me in my head to go, ‘Now let me be the bad guy in a comic-book movie,’ Liotta said of his late-career roles in films like 2019’s Marriage Story and 2021’s The Many Saints of Newark.

When asked why he never appeared in any superhero movies as the genre grew more popular in the 1990s, the actor responded: “Because I was an idiot.”

“[1986’s] Something Wild came out, so I was getting attention from that. My agent called me up and said, ‘Tim Burton would like to meet you. He’s doing a movie, Batman.’ ” Liotta recalled in the interview.

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The actor went on to explain that at the time, he felt that taking on a comic book project would have been “stupid.”

“There were never any superhero movies then. That was pretty much the first one,” he told the outlet. “I said, ‘Are you f—— nuts? Batman?!” I’m going, ‘No, that’s stupid.’ Who was stupid? I was stupid because I didn’t know.”

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Liotta did not say whether Burton, now 64, was interested in casting him as Bruce Wayne/Batman or as another character in the movie, which became 1989’s Batman. Michael Keaton portrayed the iconic comic book character and Jack Nicholson played the Joker in the hit film.

Burton’s action film helped pave the way for subsequent popular Batman and superhero films through the 1990s and into the 21st century. Keaton, now 71, even reprised the role to appear in this year’s The Flash.

Liotta’s Deadline interview was conducted three years before the actor’s death, at age 64, per the outlet.

The posthumous interview was not the first time the actor revealed he turned down the meeting with Burton. The late actor recalled the incident while speaking with IndieWire’s The Playlist at Savannah Film Festival in 2011.

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 “I remember right after a movie I did, Something Wild, Tim Burton wanted to meet me for Batman,” he recalled at the time. “And at that time, I said, ‘What are you kidding me? I’m an actor.’ But now it’s changed; now it’s good because if you do that you get other movies.”

Liotta died in his sleep in the Dominican Republic on May 26, 2022.The actor is expected to make two final film appearances appeared in Dangerous Waters and April 29, 1992, which have not yet been released, according to his IMDb page.

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Source: HIS Education