Lorraine Bracco didn’t see “Goodfellas” until 2016.
“Well, I went to the premiere, but I missed the start doing interviews, and then they pulled me out before the end, and then I had another job on a film with Sean Connery in the f—king jungle,” she told The Guardian in an interview published Monday. “And by the time I came home it wasn’t playing. And I never wanted to see it on TV.”
Bracco, 62, who starred as good girl-turned-mob wife Karen Hill in the 1990 Mafia classic, didn’t even catch the movie at its 25th-anniversary screening.
“So in New York in 2015 there’s an anniversary thing, but again I don’t actually get to see it,” she said. “And finally I see it last summer, outdoors in LA [at Cinespia]. Beautiful, 4,000 people, a full moon. And me.”
Bracco says it was worth the wait.
“It’s funny! I mean, laugh out loud. I never realized,” she said.
Bracco also revealed that one of her most famous lines in the movie, “Who do you think you are? Frankie Valli?” was her own doing: The line was originally about Rock Hudson, and she had to convince Martin Scorsese to let her do things her way.
“I was not a Rock Hudson girl,” Bracco said. “I was Frankie Valli. So I changed it. And although Marty was open, I still had to fight for it. And it’s no fun to fight Scorsese. But I had done my research. And the more we shot, the bolder I got.”
She added, “I was lucky, I knew Robert [De Niro], so I had a friend. And Ray [Liotta] was always delicious. Marty I didn’t know so well, but what I learned was not to be afraid of my ideas, and that he was open to them. Unconditionally! That was a big thing. The boys were always like, ‘Let me try this.’ So by the third day, it was, ‘Well, if they’re doing it, I’m doing it, too.’”
She also revealed that her upbringing helped her prepare for the role of Karen.
“My father was Italian-American and my mother was a war bride. English, from Oxford,” she said. “And I was born in Brooklyn but we moved to a Jewish neighborhood on Long Island. So I knew the Italian world and the Jewish world. That helped. I am a true immigrant, Mr. Trump!”
Speaking of Trump, the “Sopranos” star isn’t impressed with the POTUS.
“Oh, I’ve met him in New York,” she said. “Never my kind of guy. Always very arrogant.”