Ray Liotta, the award-winning actor best known for his portrayal of mobster Henry Hill in "Goodfellas," died suddenly. He was shooting the film "Dangerous Waters.”

Liotta's publicist, Jen Allen, said he was in the Dominican Republic shooting the movie and didn't wake up Thursday morning. Police in the Dominican Republic said they received a call just before 6 a.m. at a hotel where Liotta was staying with his fiancée and found the actor dead.

Liotta was prolific in film and television, performing more than 125 roles in his career, including in the movies “Field of Dreams," "Cop Land," "The Rat Pack", and "The Many Saints of Newark."

Liotta grew up in Union Township, New Jersey after being adopted from an orphanage in Newark when he was 6 months old by a township clerk and an auto parts owner. Liotta always assumed he was mostly Italian - the movies did too. But later in life while searching for his birth parents, he discovered he’s actually Scottish.

Liotta often said he did not set out to become an actor. Growing up he played sports and thought he would go into construction work. Then, on a lark he appeared in a high school play and was turned on to acting.

He would often say in interviews that he only started auditioning for plays because a pretty girl told him to. But it set him on a course. After graduation, he got an agent and soon he got his first big break on the soap opera “Another World.”

It would take a few years for him to land his first big movie role, in Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild” as Melanie Griffith’s character’s hotheaded ex-convict husband Ray.

Liotta is survived by his daughter, actress Karsen Liotta.