Ray Liotta has had a career of highs and lows, but those highs have been pretty strong. He’s doing pretty well for himself now, returning to television with the NBC drama Shades of Blue. But it’s always fun to think about what could have been.
Especially when he could have been Batman.
That’s right, according to Liotta’s recent interview with the LA Times to promote the show, he was offered the chance to meet for the title role in Tim Burton’s Batman.
Keep in mind how different the public opinion was on Batman and superheroes in general at the time Batman was being made. This was a very different climate for films, far removed from the comic book movie wonderland we have today. Batman, as a character, was still primarily associated with the ’60s TV show, so Liotta turned it down.
“I think Tim Burton is a great, great director and I always regretted not going and meeting him, just to talk,” Liotta says. “It just seemed silly.”
A rising talent in 1989, Liotta would have provided the production with more star power than Jack Nicholson and probably would have made the film easier to swallow in the public mindset. People today tend to forget that there was huge backlash against the casting of Michael Keaton on that film.
Luckily, things turned out just fine. Keaton gave us one of the best Batman performances of all time and Liotta went on to do Goodfellas, which he might not have had the chance to do if he had been tied down to the Batman franchise.