Ray Liotta Was Sent A Horse Head By Sinatra’s Daughters For Turning Down Role

Ray Liotta, star of Goodfellas and The Many Saints of Newark, once received a fake horse head from the daughters of Frank Sinatra over his playing the crooner in the 1998 film The Rat Pack. Liotta is best known for his work in gangster films, but has also made an impact in such films as Marriage Story and Field of Dreams. The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel film to the landmark series The Sopranos in which he played twins “Hollywood Dick” and “Sally” Moltisanti, was released on October 1.

Liotta’s work in gangster films has led to fans associating him with the genre, but The Rat Pack is one of many roles Liotta is known for that doesn’t fall within the bounds of the mobster genre. The HBO film from director Rob Cohen centered on the titular group of 1960s celebrities, primarily exploring Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford. The Rat Pack also starred Joe Mantegna and Don Cheadle, who received a Golden Globe for his performance as Davis.

In an interview on Jay Leno’s Garage (via the Independent), Liotta discusses the fake horse head gift given to him by Sinatra’s daughters, Nancy and Tina, as a response to his decision to make The Rat Pack. The Sinatras apparently wanted to make a miniseries about the life of their father with Liotta in the lead role, but he wasn’t comfortable working with the singer’s family so directly. When he took on the part in a different project, he received a prop horse head in the mail, a reference to the classic scene in The Godfather:

We were doing [The Rat Pack] and I got delivered a horse’s head. Obviously, it wasn’t a real one, but it was a horse’s head. And, you know, a horse’s head means you’re toast. It turned out that his daughters sent it and said, ‘Oh, you could do this one, but you couldn’t do the one that we wanted you to?’

The miniseries planned by the Sinatras never made it off the ground, though The Rat Pack went on to win three Emmy awards in technical categories and receiving further nominations for Mantegna and Cheadle’s performances. Sinatra’s story has also been told through numerous plays, documentaries and TV shows. Director Martin Scorsese had long planned to make a biopic about Sinatra’s life, but after languishing in development hell, the project was scrapped in 2017.

With Liotta’s work in The Many Saints of Newark, No Sudden Move, and the TV series Hanna all releasing in 2021, the veteran actor shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Even though he’s proven a versatile performer, the success of his two films on HBO Max this year shows the public remains interested in seeing him in old-fashioned gangster movies. Though Liotta’s Henry Hill in Goodfellas will almost certainly remain his most iconic part, the prop-threat from the Sinatras clearly didn’t leave his career sleeping with the fishes.

Source: Jay Leno’s Garage/Independent

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