The ‘Raging Bull’ star who’s never watched the movie: “I mean, I’ve seen parts of it”
Many people hate the sound of their own voice. And if you ever say that out loud, then listen to a recording of yourself, chances are you’ll be disappointed. Cathy Moriarty knows the feeling. In an interview about her performance in Martin Scorsese’s seminal 1980 boxing film, Raging Bull—to the extent that it was even about boxing—she made it clear that she couldn’t stand to hear herself speak. She couldn’t recognise herself, as if it were a different person entirely. Like looking in the mirror and not knowing who’s staring back at you.
Perhaps this is less of an issue in the social media age, where recording yourself is practically a part-time job for everyone, and people are more accustomed to the timbre of their own speech. But for 20th-century actors, hearing themselves—and knowing that countless others were listening too—was central to the job. Not for Cathy Moriarty.
She has never watched Raging Bull. “I mean, I’ve seen parts of it,” she admitted. “Just not in its entirety. Not in one sitting.” It’s astonishing—her performance as Vikki LaMotta, wife of feral boxer Jake, is unforgettable. Of course, it’s a savage film, but that’s not why she avoided it.
“It was the first time I’d heard my voice recorded,” she explained. “The film played and I said, ‘Who is that?’ They said, ‘It’s you.’ And I said, ‘That is not what I sound like. That sounds like a truck driver.’” Her voice—a rasping aide-memoire of old New York—remains remarkable. “I like it now,” she says. “It just took me a while.”
Raging Bull, starring Robert De Niro as the self-destructive Jake LaMotta, is beloved by critics and moviegoers alike. The Academy adored it too. But boxing fans? Not so much. Not because Scorsese and De Niro got LaMotta’s personality wrong—but because they got his boxing wrong.
The film isn’t really about the fights. Most of the bouts aren’t depicted as realistic combat sports but as visual metaphors for whatever was happening to LaMotta outside the ring. In reality, he wasn’t the bestial, bloodthirsty pugilist the film portrays, an image that has since embedded itself in popular imagination. He was a cerebral fighter—you’d have to be to compete with the consensus greatest boxer of all time, “Sugar” Ray Robinson. There are clips of LaMotta using clever angles to slip and ride 16 punches in a row.
But Raging Bull doesn’t care about that. Scorsese himself has admitted that he’s “not a boxing fan” (which shows) and was more interested in LaMotta’s personal life. It’s a story about hysterical masculine insecurity interrupting any possibility of real human connection.
That’s where Cathy Moriarty’s character, Vickie, comes in. She’s a coquettish (and underage) ingénue who drives her husband to violent fits of jealousy just by existing. It’s tragic for both of them. By the end, Vickie has left Jake, and he’s taken up a botched career in stand-up comedy—the only way he can attempt to communicate with people. You wonder if he could bear to hear the sound of his own voice?
