Goodfellas featured many real-life gangsters, most notably its lead, Henry Hill. But what happened to the real Henry after the events of the movie?
Goodfellas introduced viewers to a group of gangsters from the 1970s and 1980s, among those Henry Hill, whose life served as basis for the movie – but what happened to him in real life, following the events of the movie? Martin Scorsese is one of the most respected directors in the film industry and the man behind many classics such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy, as well as more recent hits like The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman. Scorsese is mostly known for his crime movies, which explore themes such as Italian-American identity, guilt, and redemption, and among those is his 1990 movie, Goodfellas.
The movie tells the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his days as a teenager fascinated by the criminal life and mafia presence in his Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn, to the Lufthansa heist and his decision to work as an informant to avoid either ending in jail or being killed. Goodfellas is based on the book Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi, which chronicles the life of Henry Hill. The movie is regarded as one of the best in the gangster genre, and in 2000 was deemed “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant” and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress.
Goodfellas ends with Henry and his family entering the witness protection program after serving as an informant and leading to the conviction of his former partners and friends. Of course, a lot more happened after the events depicted in the movie, and here’s everything Henry Hill went through.
Goodfellas: Henry Hill’s Life After The Events Of The Movie
The end title cards in Goodfellas state Henry was still a protected witness as of 1990, though he was arrested in 1987 for narcotics conspiracy and received five years’ probation, and that he had been clean since. He and his wife, Karen, separated in 1989, and his former mob friends either died in prison or would have to wait decades to be eligible for parole. Sadly, that wasn’t Henry’s final problem with the law, and due to all his crimes while in witness protection (burglary, assault, and three DWIs), he and Karen were expelled from the witness protection program in the early 1990s, and their divorce was finalized in 2002.
Henry’s drug problems began in the late 1970s, and followed him for the rest of his life. He was arrested again in 2001 on narcotics-related charges in Seattle, where he was living under a new identity. After that, he claimed to be clean, but was arrested again in 2004 after leaving his luggage at Lee Bird Field Airport in Nebraska, which contained drug paraphernalia and glass tubes with cocaine and methamphetamine residue. He was later sentenced to 180 days imprisonment for attempted methamphetamine possession and later to four years of probation. He was arrested again in 2009 for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, which he attributed to drinking problems.
In the early 2000s, Henry began to appear in various TV interviews, photoshoots (most notably one for Entertainment Weekly next to Ray Liotta, who encouraged him to enter rehab), and documentaries. He also wrote a couple of books, such as The Wiseguy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes From My Life As a Goodfella To Cooking On the Run, where he shared life stories and recipes, and the non-fiction book The Lufthansa Heist in collaboration with Daniel Simone, published in 2015. He also worked as a chef at an Italian restaurant in Nebraska and opened his own (appropriately named Wiseguys) in Connecticut in 2007, but closed the next month after a fire. He died in 2012 of complications related to heart disease. Henry Hill definitely didn’t have an easy life beyond the events of Goodfellas, and he struggled to get rid of the shadow of the mob even when he was already safe.
