With its breakneck pace and choppy editing inspired by the opening minutes of François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas is one of the most rewatchable movies of all time. Catch it on TV and you have to stick around until the end. There’s so much packed into its 145-minute runtime that it never gets old.
The movie has a huge cast, anchored by Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and Robert De Niro — each giving one of the finest performances of their respective careers — with plenty of strong support from the likes of Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino. Here are all the major performances in Goodfellas, ranked.
Chuck Low As Morris Kessler
Morrie is so annoying that it comes as no surprise when Jimmy decides to have him whacked. He’s constantly complaining about Jimmy holding out on him and he starts to come off as a broken record.
Chuck Low does a fine job of playing Morrie this way, but it also makes him one of the movie’s most irritating characters.
Tony Darrow As Sonny Bunz
After spending a decade as a nightclub singer, Tony Darrow’s life changed when Martin Scorsese liked his debut acting performance in the cult film Street Trash and offered him a role in Goodfellas.
Despite being an actual associate of the Gambino crime family in real life, Darrow convincingly plays the mild-mannered owner of the Bamboo Lounge with a genuine fear of Tommy’s unpredictability.
Michael Imperioli As Spider
One of the many supporting players from Goodfellas who was later given roles in The Sopranos, Michael Imperioli's brief appearance as Spider that sticks out as memorable, even before the actor was known as Christopher Moltisanti.
His back-and-forth with Tommy is mesmerizing. There’s a comic energy to it, but as we see Tommy getting angrier and angrier, we’re on the edge of our seats, fearing what’ll happen to Spider. And then, of course, the worst happens.
Frank Sivero As Frankie Carbone
Frank Sivero’s Frankie Carbone is mainly used to serve Goodfellas’ comic relief, like in the coffee-to-go scene with Tommy at Stacks’ apartment.
Sivero’s terrific comic timing, as well as chemistry with his co-stars (particularly Joe Pesci), help to sell these scenes spectacularly.
Gina Mastrogiacomo As Janice Rossi
Henry Hill’s first major on-the-side girlfriend, Janice Rossi, doesn’t stand out as much of a character. She’s more of a plot device, used to show how Henry’s lifestyle is developing and also becoming a problem for the mob as she incites Karen’s fury.
But Gina Mastrogiacomo still plays the role of guilty homewrecker with real humanity. The look on her face when Karen is yelling at her through the intercom (“Get your own g*ddamn man!!”) is genuinely conflicted.
Frank DiLeo As Tuddy Cicero
Frank DiLeo’s Tuddy Cicero plays a key role in a young Henry Hill’s entry into the mafia, so he only appears prominently in the early scenes.
Whether he’s nonchalantly getting mad about Henry using his aprons to plug up an injured man’s gunshot wound or threatening the mailman for delivering letters from Henry’s school, DiLeo manages to deliver a handful of unforgettable moments with his limited screen time.
Frank Vincent As Billy Batts
Frank Vincent and Joe Pesci performed music together before moving into acting, so there’s a real-life friendship behind all their on-screen feuds. Maybe their long history as friends is why they didn’t hold back in the roles of Billy Batts and Tommy DeVito.
At a party to celebrate the end of Batts’ prison sentence, Batts barbs Tommy about how he used to be a shoeshine, ultimately getting himself kicked to death (or nearly to death, as it’s later revealed) right in the middle of the bar. It’s one of the movie’s most intense and unforgettable scenes, and that’s all thanks to the performances.
Debi Mazar As Sandy
Accurately portraying a substance dependence isn’t easy, but a pre-Entourage Debi Mazar nails it as Henry’s coke-cutting mistress.
Mazar makes her first appearance late in the story, and she does a fine job of matching the manic energy of the movie’s final act.
Paul Sorvino As Paulie Cicero
Paul Sorvino considered quitting Goodfellas before shooting began because he doubted his ability to play Paulie, but the night before he was due to start filming, he nailed the Paulie look in the mirror and realized he could play the character. Paulie is the local mob boss, an intimidating presence, and a stony-faced, cigar-chomping Sorvino really sells the idea that he’s the guy in charge who doesn’t have to move an inch for anybody.
In the final scene with Henry, Paulie holds back his emotions, but they’re clearly there. The nuances of Sorvino’s performance make Paulie’s heartbreak abundantly clear.
Robert De Niro As Jimmy Conway
Goodfellas is one of the rare collaborations between Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro in which De Niro doesn’t indisputably play the lead role. De Niro gets top billing, but his character Jimmy Conway is there to complement Henry Hill’s journey through the ranks of the mob and later into witness protection.
Developing incredible on-screen chemistry with Ray Liotta and his Raging Bull co-star Joe Pesci, De Niro still delivers a knockout performance in this supporting role. His anger feels real when he’s yelling at the guys for spending the spoils of the Lufthansa heist. With a single look set to Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” he tells us he’s going to whack Morrie.
Lorraine Bracco As Karen Hill
David Chase cast Lorraine Bracco as Dr. Melfi in The Sopranos (after initially trying to cast her as mob wife Carmela) based on the strength of her performance as Karen Hill in Goodfellas. Karen is a sort of audience surrogate, getting seduced by the mafia lifestyle by long tracking shots through the Copacabana and being handed a blood-drenched revolver, just like we are.
Bracco plays Karen’s rage impeccably well. Whether she’s yelling at Henry during a prison visit or yelling at his mistress through an apartment intercom, it’s not empty yelling — the stakes of her anger always feel real.
Ray Liotta As Henry Hill
The great thing about Henry Hill as a gangster movie protagonist — and the thing that makes him possibly the best protagonist in the genre — is that he’s unprepared for the life of a mobster. He wants the glitz and glamour and money, but he doesn’t have the stomach for the nitty-gritty. While Tommy and Jimmy can stomach digging up a rotting corpse they buried, Henry starts throwing up.
Ray Liotta brings real nuance to Henry, selling every emotion, hiding little performative details in the bigger moments. The climactic sequence with the helicopter is a prime example of Liotta’s committed performance in this role; he’s paranoid, he’s sweating, he’s itching for his next fix.
Joe Pesci As Tommy DeVito
Joe Pesci easily gives the most captivating and memorable performance in Goodfellas. His portrayal of dangerously unstable hothead mafioso Tommy DeVito earned him a much-deserved Academy Award. From Tommy’s “Funny how?” prank to his unprecedented killing of Spider to his realization that he’s about to be whacked, Pesci expressed a wide range of emotions in this role.
His performance flitted between hilarious, emotionally engaging, and truly sinister. Taking full advantage of the freedom to improvise that Scorsese provided, Pesci delivers a career-defining turn in Goodfellas.