Every Goodfellas Actor That Appears in The Irishman

Martin Scorsese is notable for reusing actors in his movies, so here are all of the actors from Goodfellas that also appear in his 2019 gangster movie The Irishman. Goodfellas has been noted as one of the greatest movies of all time, and likely the highest career achievement of Scorsese. The 1990 movie continued Scorsese’s trend of violence, profanity, crime, and fast-paced storytelling that he would perfect in The Wolf of Wall Street and later bring back in The Irishman.

Goodfellas tells the story of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a young New York kid who gets wrapped up in the life of a gangster. Henry works his way up to the top of the mob, though faces an utter downfall throughout the second half of the film. The Irishman, a crime epic at over 3 and a half hours, follows Frank Sheeran (Robert de Niro), a labor union leader who involves himself with the mob as a hitman for the Bufalino crime family. The Irishman was also the first time Scorsese worked with Al Pacino, who was the other notable crime lord actor from The Godfather franchise.

Both movies are based on real-life memoirs and tellings of famous American gangsters. Interestingly, both feature a clash in Irish and Italian gangsters, where the main character is ostracized for his Irish descent among Italian cohorts. Goodfellas and The Irishman are also notable for losing out on many Academy Awards they were nominated for that critics were sure would be given to Scorsese and his stalwart acting partners. Among his influential style and themes, Scorsese is famous for his all-star casts and a few actors that recur in his filmography. Here’s a breakdown of all of the Goodfellas actors who later appeared in The Irishman.

Robert de Niro

Scorsese and de Niro became one of Hollywood’s most infamous collaborative teams, with the latter appearing in nine of Scorsese’s feature films. Goodfellas was de Niro’s sixth collaboration with Scorsese after Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, New York, New York, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy. Although billed as a leading actor, de Niro actually has a less present role in Goodfellas than one might think. He plays Jimmy Conway, Henry’s gangster mentor who ends up betraying him late in the film. Jimmy was a full-on member of the mob who also participated in the brutal murder of Billy Batts and organized the Lufthuansia airport heist.

In The Irishman, Robert de Niro plays much more of an aging Henry Hill role, this time becoming the guy that gets wrapped up in the mob but isn’t necessarily “in” the crime community. De Niro’s character, Frank Sheeran, became known as a guy who wouldn’t snitch on the mob early on, so more crime families brought him in to do their dirty work. Though Sheeran’s ending is set up in a similar way to Henry Hill’s, Sheeran pleads the Fifth at court, so he never snitches but ends up serving time in prison. De Niro notably wasn’t nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, an unfortunately common pattern in his collaborations with Scorsese.

Joe Pesci

While Joe Pesci and Scorsese have collaborated multiple times, he is notable for his criminal roles outside of Scorsese’s movies. He even starred in the youth Christmas movie Home Alone as one of the burglars terrorizing Kevin McCallister the same year as Goodfellas. Pesci has collaborated with Scorsese four times, and all of the movies involve crime or gangster relations. The duo first worked together in Raging Bulls with Goodfellas, Casino, and The Irishman following. Three of his collaborations with Scorsese garnered him nominations and a win for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards.

Pesci has one of the most terrifying roles in Goodfellas as Tommy DeVito, a head honcho in the mob who gets whacked after falsely believing he was becoming a “made man.” Pesci won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Goodfellas, sealing his title as an all-time great gangster actor. Twenty-nine years later, Pesci teamed up with Scorsese again in another supporting role in The Irishman. He portrayed Russell Bufalino in a role similar to Tommy as the head of the Bufalino crime family where he employs de Niro’s character, though is eventually jailed instead of murdered for his crimes. Pesci was again nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars for The Irishman, along with Al Pacino for the same movie, however, both lost to Brad Pitt for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Welker White

Welker White has a pretty small filmography with most of her bigger movie roles being in Scorsese-directed flicks. She doesn’t appear to be partial to the gangster genre outside of Scorsese considering outside credits include Eat, Pray, Love and Dead Poets Society. She’s appeared in three Scorsese movies including Goodfellas,The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman. White plays the role of Lois Byrd in Goodfellas, who is involved in the crime family as Henry and Karen’s babysitter/drug courier but doesn’t really care what happens to them one way or another in dire situations, she just wants her lucky hat. Nearly 30 years later in The Irishman, White appears as union leader Jimmy Hoffa’s wife, Jo. She becomes integral to the plot when she suspects one of Jimmy’s enemies planted a bomb in the car after firing her from her job. Both of her roles in Scorsese’s Goodfellas and The Irishman also feature key scenes involving phone calls and cars.

Paul Herman

Paul Herman is a small-part recurring Scorsese actor who is better known for being featured in a variety of crime-based gangster shows and movies. Aside from Goodfellas and The Irishman, Herman has had roles in The Sopranos, Silver Lining’s Playbook, Once Upon a Time in America, and Cop Land. Herman is credited as “Dealer” in Goodfellas, though is upgraded to “Gambler in Phone Booth” in Casino. His role as Whispers DiTullio in The Irishman is one of his better-known roles, which he likely gained after his success in a recurring role on The Sopranos. Among The Irishman‘s star-studded cast as Whispers, Herman is the character who asks Frank to bomb the Delaware-based Cadillac Linen Service.

Bo Dietl

Part-time actor, consulting associate, and retired police detective, Bo Dietl came to notoriety after an autobiography on his police career was turned into the 1998 movie One Tough Cop, in which he was played by Stephen Baldwin. Scorsese picked up on Dietl’s crime connection and included him in several of his movies such as Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street (in which he plays himself), and The Irishman. Dietl typically played the role of detective or cop who was hunting the anti-hero protagonists of Scorsese’s movies until he played the role of labor leader and gangster Joseph Glicmo in The Irishman. Before The Irishman and Wolf of Wall Street, Dietl portrayed the detective that arrests Henry Hill in Goodfellas.

Philip Suriano

Philip Suriano is known for starring in crime movies in the 1990s, eventually returning to the screen after a 21-year hiatus for The Irishman. He played an extremely small role in Goodfellas as Cicero’s ‘60s Crew #2, though achieved a sizable part as Dominic Santoro in Scorsese’s film Casino a few years later. In another minor part, Suriano played the Silver Shop Owner in The Irishman with his real-life son playing the role of Silver Shop Owner’s Son.

Garry Pastore

Another actor who gets small roles in Scorsese movies, Garry Pastore has only been in six movies, four of which are dark Scorsese movies. He’s been featured in Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Casino, and recently The Irishman, while his other two roles are in Analyze That and Blazin’. Pastore plays Mikey Franzese in Goodfellas, seen when Henry enters the Bamboo Lounge and is introduced to a variety of notable gangsters. In The Irishman, Pastore returns in a small role as Frank Sidone, another real-life gangster who was murdered in 1980 and apparently played a role in the murder of Harvey Keitel’s character Angelo Bruno. It’s likely Scorsese believed Pastore just had the face that real-life gangsters of the time would have had.

Frank Aquilino

The Scorsese camp actor appears in multiple of his movies, though primarily in extremely minor roles. In Goodfellas, Aquillinio is credited as playing Batts’ Crew #2, which isn’t really the crew you want to be a part of in the movie. Additionally, he plays Friendly Lounge Guy “Butchie” in The Irishman, a step up from Goodfellas and on the better side of the law this time. Aquilino typically stars in minor roles that involve crime, bars, and cards, having small parts in movies like After Hours, Analyze This, and Married to the Mob.

Vito Picone

Lead singer of Vito and The Elegants, Vito Picone only has three screen credits, all of which are mobster based and feature him playing himself. His first role was in Goodfellas where he makes a cameo appearance as himself, which was similarly repeated in the pilot episode of The Sopranos. In 2019, Scorsese brought back Picone to play the Villa Roma Manager/Himself in The Irishman.

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Jordan Williams
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Jordan Williams is a Movie/TV Feature Senior Staff Writer for Screen Rant. She graduated from the University of Oregon in 2020 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Media Studies.

Jordan is based in Seattle, Washington and enjoys exploring the natural beauty the PNW has to offer. She runs on coffee and classic movies, taking pride in having watched every film on AFI’s 100 Greatest Films list and every Best Picture Oscar winner.

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