Ray Liotta Turned Down Burton's 1989 Batman For Being "Too Silly"
Says the man who chose to be in Breathless...
People in glass houses really do throw stones.
In the grand history of actors who almost played Batman, there are some great stand-outs who missed the cut. There are also some who should never have been considered by sane minds in the first place. Ray Liotta probably sits somewhere in the middle: he's stolen the show in Something Wild in 1986 as a psychotic criminal ex looking for revenge, but he was mostly limited to TVwork before then.
So it must have come as a shock to Liotta that Tim Burton apparently sought him out for the role of Bruce Wayne in his 1989 movie before Michael Keaton was controversially cast. According to Liotta though, he refused to even meet the director who could have kick-started his big screen career - which is something he regrets now:
"I think Tim Burton is a great, great director, and I always regretted not going and meeting him, just to talk," LiottatoldtheLATimes. "It just seemed silly."
To be fair to him, superhero movies at the time WEREsilly. There'd been no Batman since Adam West and the idea of capes and tights probably wasn't high on any young actor's list of things to do. Luckily for Liotta, he didn't sink from trace, making Dominic &Eugene, Field Of Dreams and Goodfellas in the space of two years to set up a career of never living up to those heights ever again.
Would you like to have seen Ray Liotta as Batman? Share your reactions below in the comments thread.