By the way the legendary “Am I some kind of clown, do I amuse you…” scene is not in the book and, apparently, was improvised by Joe Pesci who had seen a real mobster do something similar. A decade prior, Liotta told GQ, “For 20 years now, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t hear somebody mention Goodfellas. Unless I stay home all night. It’s defined who I am, in a sense.” Seriously. According to producer Irwin Winkler, Tom Cruise “was discussed,” and according to producer Barbara De Fina, Madonna was “in the mix” to the extent that Scorsese scouted her at a performance of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow on Broadway.

By all accounts, Lucchese crime family associate Thomas DeSimone, portrayed by Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito in the film, was every bit as ruthless, explosively-tempered, and murderous as his onscreen counterpart. Still, there were some major differences between the real-life DeSimone and Pesci’s character. First, DeSimone—who stood 6-feet 2-inches tall and weighed 225 pounds—hardly would have suffered from the Napoleonic complex implied by the 5-foot 4-inch Pesci's performance. Also, Pesci was in his late forties when he took on the role, while DeSimone met his violent end when he was just 28 years old. 10. Some of the real criminals portrayed in Goodfellas were actually toned down for the film. This was an entertaining memoir of former mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta's character from the movie 'Goodfellas'). The book was lively and energetic I thought and lots of gangster euphemisms like the "Forgetta 'bout it." True to the movie, Henry and his two close associates Tommy DeSimone (Joe Pesci's character) and Jimmy Burke (portrayed by Robert De Niro) were some shady and vicious criminals. Their personalities where heavily felt throughout the book. And when you finally get to the end, and see how Hill escapes a bullet in the head (that was issued to everyone else who knew of the Lufthansa heist) to become a Federal employee, you wonder... is this all okay and correct that this should happen? People are killed en route to this, millions of dollars of property and cash are redistributed among wiseguys, and yet the prime mover becomes another man in lieu of the one he never was. I am not sure.

Ray Liotta (Henry Hill)

Goodfellas is No. 94 on the American Film Institute's " 100 Years, 100 Movies" list and moved up to No. 92 on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) from 2007. In June 2008, the AFI put Goodfellas at No. 2 on their AFI's 10 Top 10—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the movie-related community. [61] Goodfellas was regarded as the second-best in the gangster film genre (after The Godfather). [62] In 2000, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

a b c d e f "The 63rd Academy Awards (1991)". Oscars.org. Archived from the original on March 22, 2011 . Retrieved August 14, 2014. Paul Sorvino played Paul Cicero in Goodfellas. His real name was Paul Vario, and he was born in New York City. Vario was a captain in the Lucchese family. At one point he was underboss. When he was 11, in 1925, Vario got a seven month juvenile detention term for truancy.

Michael Imperioli (Spider)

The Making of Goodfellas". Empire Magazine. November 1990. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015 . Retrieved June 5, 2015.