Brad Bird Originally Envisioned Ray Liotta and Harry Dean Stanton in RAY GUNN

Ray Gunn spent so many years trying to get made that Brad Bird once imagined a very different pair of actors bringing some of its characters to life… Ray Liotta (Goodfellas) and Harry Dean Stanton (The Straight Story).

That’s one of the fascinating bits of casting history Bird shared during a Q&A following a recent screening of Ray Gunn that I attended. The animated sci-fi noir had been kicking around for decades, which meant Bird’s ideas for the cast naturally changed as the years passed.

When asked about assembling the voice cast, Bird revealed: “Well, it was been around a while. So, originally, I was thinking of Ray Liotta, and I was thinking of Harry Dean Stanton for Ira. And then, you know, that kind of went by the wayside. Both of them are no longer with us and it fell to new actors, who I think are perfect.”

It’s easy to imagine Liotta bringing his unmistakable edge to Bird’s noir world, while Stanton as Ira sounds like inspired casting. Stanton died in 2017, followed by Liotta in 2022, long before Bird was finally able to bring Ray Gunn to the screen.

The finished film ultimately landed a hell of a voice cast that includes Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, and Tom Waits, with Waits taking on the role of Ira.

For Bird, though, casting great actors in an animated movie isn’t simply about getting recognizable voices. Their performances give the animators something richer to work with and force the animation team to meet the actors at their level.

Bird explained: “And, you know, it was really nice to bring them in, because the most wonderful thing about good voice actors is that they set the bar for the animation crew, and, you know, good ones like this set the bar really high, and the animators have to come up to that level.

“And there's nuances in the performance that they have to, you know, represent visually. So, it is a way, it's almost forcing them to be their very best, bring their very best animation to it because there's so much going on in the voices.”

That’s a cool way to look at the relationship between voice acting and animation. The actor doesn’t simply record dialogue and walk away. Every pause, inflection, emotion, and strange little character beat gives the animators more material to translate into a physical performance.

Ray Gunn may not have ended up with the cast Bird imagined decades ago, but after such a long trip to the screen, he finally got the actors he believes were right for the movie it became.