If you’re a hard-boiled character actor looking to get out of dodgy villain roles and bad horror movies, one of the most well-worn routes is to find a late-blooming penchant for comedy. From Robert De Niro to Christopher Walken, plenty of actors in recent memory have revived their careers by using their tough guy skills to tickle the audience’s funnybone. (Or in De Niro’s case, not).
The latest actor to make the switch is Ray Liotta; while he still crops up in more serious tough guy roles from time to time, he’s started to make a decent living out of roles in comedies like “Wild Hogs,” “Observe and Report” and “Youth in Revolt.” He’s got the Tobey Maguire/Elizabeth Banks dramedy “The Details” on the way, and now he’s signed on to a film from one of the more potent comic teams around at the moment — the Judd Apatow-produced, David Wain-directed comedy “Wanderlust.”
The comedy toplines Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston as a married couple who escape New York society by moving into a hippie commune, and also features Lauren Ambrose, Justin Theroux, Alan Alda and Malin Akerman among the cast. There’s no word on who Liotta will play — we’ve had the script for a while, but never quite got around to reading it, otherwise we’d take our usual semi-educated guess…
The pleasantly surprising “Role Models” showed that Wain could bring his comic chops from “The State” to a more mainstream audience, without diluting it, and with Apatow having his back, and a strong cast, this is one of the comedies we’re most looking forward to in the next year. [The Hollywood Reporter]
