After attending New York City Community College for one year, he enrolled at the HB Studio to study acting.

The film's editor, John Bloom, said, "I do not believe there’s ever been a better pair of villains than Richard Masur and Ray Sharkey — funny and terrifying in equal measure.

In 1987, Sharkey spent two months in an Orange County rehab center in an effort to kick his drug and alcohol addiction for good.

"[8] Another stated, "Sharkey's portrayal of Steelgrave, with his murderous, mercurial charm, has been likened to James Cagney's Cody Jarrett in White Heat".

[7] Producer Stephen J. Cannell and many fans were sorry to see Sharkey's character go, but the format of Wiseguy was self-contained story "arcs" of several episodes.

The following year, he appeared in a guest spot on Jake and the Fatman, and starred in the television movie In the Line of Duty: Street War.

On July 30, 1992, while filming a guest spot on the television series, The Hat Squad, in Vancouver, he was arrested for drug possession.

Canadian customs officials, making a routine inspection of incoming cargo at the airport, discovered small amounts of cocaine and heroin in a black envelope being sent from Los Angeles to Sharkey in Vancouver.

After his death, Sharkey's manager Herb Nanas admitted that they both decided to keep his diagnosis a secret, fearing it would hurt his career.

Despite his diagnosis, Sharkey remained in denial about his HIV-positive status and, according to his manager, had sex with an estimated 100 women after he was diagnosed.

[16] In an interview with Details magazine conducted in March 1993, three months before his death, Sharkey told the reporter that he was in fact HIV-positive by saying that he "harbored a strain of HIV" that he believed would never develop into AIDS.

At the time of the interview, Sharkey weighed 80 pounds (36 kg), had a hacking cough and was suffering from a brain lesion.

[17] When asked about his ex-girlfriend Elena Monica who accused him of infecting her with HIV, Sharkey said, "This disease is funny.

[18] Sharkey died of complications from AIDS at Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, on June 11, 1993, at age 40.