Background and career
Anthony LaPaglia ( lə-PAH-lee-ə, Italian: [laˈpaʎʎa]; born 31 January 1959) is an Australian actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen he has received several accolades including three AACTA Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. For his starring role as Jack Malone on the American television crime drama series Without a Trace (2002–09), he received a Golden Globe Award in 2004. For his role as Simon Moon on the NBC sitcom Frasier (2000–04) he won the Primetime Emmy Award. On stage, he starred in the 1997 Broadway revival of the Arthur Miller play A View from the Bridge for which he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. He has won three AACTA Awards, Best Actor in a Leading Role for Lantana (2001) and Balibo (2009), and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Nitram (2021). He acted in many feature and TV films, among them So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), Empire Records (1995), Sweet and Lowdown (1999), and Road to Perdition (2002). He voiced a skua in Happy Feet (2006) and its 2011 sequel.
LaPaglia was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Maria Johannes (née Brendel), a secretary and model, and Egidio "Eddie" LaPaglia, an auto mechanic and car dealer. LaPaglia's mother was Dutch, and his father emigrated from Bovalino, Calabria, Italy, at the age of eighteen. His younger brother, Jonathan LaPaglia, is also an actor, and his other brother, Michael, is a car wholesaler in Los Angeles. LaPaglia attended Rostrevor College and Norwood High School. LaPaglia was working in Adelaide as a shoe salesman for Florsheim Shoes in the early 1980s. He asked to be transferred to the US and continued working there while studying acting as he was rejected by the prestigious Sydney drama school NIDA. LaPaglia first began his venture into dramatic art in his late teens, when he enrolled in an acting course at the South Australian Castings Agency (SA Castings) in Adelaide. The two-and-half-year course was to be supplemented with a further three months, which would have included a "boot camp" and a trial listing with SA Castings. After completing one-and-a-half years of the course, LaPaglia left Adelaide for Los Angeles.
LaPaglia's earliest credit was a 1985 part in an episode of the television series Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories. His first feature film was Cold Steel in 1987, followed that same year by the title role of Frank Nitti in the telemovie Nitti: The Enforcer. LaPaglia had a supporting role as a mobster in the minor hit Betsy's Wedding (1990). He starred alongside Danny Aiello and Lainie Kazan in 29th Street, a fact-based comedy/bio-pic, as the first New York State Lottery winner, Frank Pesce Jr. This was followed by roles in the vampire/Mafia story Innocent Blood (1992), the comedy thriller So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), the legal thriller The Client (1994), and the comedy Empire Records (1995). LaPaglia appeared in the role of Jimmy Wyler, lead character in the TV series Murder One, during its second and final season. LaPaglia made his debut in an Australian production opposite Hugo Weaving in The Custodian (1993). He played a hit man in Bulletproof Heart (1994) with Mimi Rogers and starred alongside future wife Gia Carides in the romantic comedy Paperback Romance (1994). During 1997–98, LaPaglia appeared in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge with the Roundabout Theatre Company and later received a Tony Award for his portrayal of the protagonist, Eddie Carbone. LaPaglia also played Tito Merelli in Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor on Broadway. Before A View From the Bridge opened, LaPaglia was sent a script for the pilot of The Sopranos and met its creator, David Chase, to discuss the role of protagonist Tony Soprano. However, various factors, including Fox and his Broadway role, prevented LaPaglia from obtaining the role. Spike Lee cast LaPaglia as a New York police detective in Summer of Sam (1999). During 2000–04, LaPaglia appeared in eight episodes of the sitcom Frasier, including the finale, playing Daphne Moon's brother Simon. The role won him an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series". He continued to live mainly in Los Angeles, returning occasionally—especially from about 2000—for roles in major Australian films such as Looking for Alibrandi (2000), Lantana (2001), The Bank (2001), Happy Feet (2006), $9.99 (2008), Balibo (2009), and Happy Feet Two (2011). In 2002, LaPaglia co-starred as a fire captain opposite Sigourney Weaver in The Guys, a film about New York firemen who died in the World Trade Center. He also played the role onstage, rotating with Bill Murray and others. "We did it as a tribute to the men," said LaPaglia. "I've been so lucky to do it, to be part of this experience. But I can't go back to that morning or watch the video. It's too painful." He also played fictional Australian actor Anthony Bella (who played Nicky Caesar in the fictitious series Little Caesar) in the comedy movie Analyze That, but was uncredited in his role. In addition to playing the central character in Without a Trace during 2002–09, LaPaglia co-wrote an episode entitled "Deep Water". In 2009, LaPaglia played the part of Roger East, a real-life Australian journalist, in the political thriller Balibo, about the killing in 1975 of five Australian journalists by the Indonesian Army in the town of Balibo, East Timor. The opening scene depicts East's own summary execution, during the Indonesian invasion. LaPaglia was originally cast in Quentin Tarantino's 2012 film Django Unchained, but eventually left the project, calling the production "out of control." In 2012 LaPaglia starred in the ABC drama pilot Americana, but it was not picked up. He next appeared in the feature adaptation of Stephen King's A Good Marriage with Joan Allen. In 2014, LaPaglia appeared in a CBS terrorism drama pilot titled Red Zone starring as a retired CIA operative and current high school football coach who returns to active duty after a terrorist attack in Washington, D.C. It was renamed Field of Play but never aired. From about 2012, LaPaglia began accepting work in Australia more frequently. Following major roles in Underground (2012) (a biopic about Julian Assange) and the comedy Mental (2012), LaPaglia had a supporting role in the Neil Armfield's Australian romantic-drama film Holding the Man, as Bob Caleo. The 2015 film stars Ryan Corr and Craig Stott, with supporting performances from LaPaglia, Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush. Holding the Man was adapted from Timothy Conigrave's 1995 memoir of the same name. For his role within the film, LaPaglia was nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 5th AACTA Awards in 2015. In that year LaPaglia returned to his home city, Adelaide, to star in A Month of Sundays as Frank, a miserable real estate agent who finds solace and redemption in a chance friendship with an elderly woman (played by Julia Blake) who reminds him of his mother. In 2016, he appeared in his first Australian TV series: The Code, a political thriller set against rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China. The following year he starred in the four-part miniseries Sunshine, an Australian crime drama series screened on SBS, set in the western Melbourne suburb of the same name, playing the role of mentor to a promising young Sudanese-Australian basketball player. The four-part miniseries is an Essential Media production, directed by Daina Reid and written by Matt Cameron and Elise McCredie. In 2018, LaPaglia appeared in the fifth season of the comedy Rake, based loosely on the life and misadventures of Charles Waterstreet. In 2017, LaPaglia played Vito Rizzuto in the Simon Barry Canadian TV series Bad Blood, which aired on Citytv, in French on ICI Radio-Canada. From 2017 to 2020, he starred in Neil Jordan's series Riviera. Set in the French Riviera, the series follows Georgina Clios, a midwestern art curator whose life is turned upside down after the death of her billionaire husband Constantine Clios (LaPaglia) in a yacht accident. Georgina becomes immersed in a world of lies, double-dealing and crime, as she seeks to uncover the truth about her husband's death. In 2023, LaPaglia appeared in the ABC TV series The Black Hand, which explores the activities of the Italian 'Ndrangheta in the cane fields of Queensland, Australia, in the 1920s and 1930s. The same year, he appeared in his Australian stage debut as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman at Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne, directed by Neil Armfield. The production toured to Sydney and Perth afterwards. He reprised the role in Brisbane and then at the Festival Theatre, Adelaide in September 2026, in his first stage performance in his home town. The cast includes Alison Whyte, Josh Helman and Ben O'Toole, and Mark Saturno, and is co-produced Torben and Richelle Brookman. By the end of the run it will have completed over 130 performances, in front of more than 125,000 people.
La Paglia said that he has employed an American accent since 1982, when he moved to the US, in order to further his career there. LaPaglia's first marriage was to actress Cherie Michan. His second marriage was to actress Gia Carides, whom he met when both acted in the Australian film Lucky Break (1994). In 2015, LaPaglia and Carides split after being married for 17 years, "due to irreconcilable differences". They have a daughter together. He married Alexandra Henkel (his third marriage) on 28 April 2018. They divorced in 2025. In the 1980s, LaPaglia was a goalkeeper in the National Soccer League, playing for Adelaide City and West Adelaide. As of 2007, he was director of Sydney FC. In October 2007, he played in a charity soccer match, playing for Hollywood United FC against David Beckham's LA Galaxy in 2007 to raise funds for those affected by the October 2007 California wildfires.
