Anthony LaPaglia

Anthony LaPaglia is an Australian actor born in Adelaide, South Australia, to Maria Johannes, a secretary and model of Dutch descent, and Egidio "Eddie" LaPaglia, an auto mechanic and car dealer whose family emigrated from Bovalino, Calabria, Italy. LaPaglia attended Rostrevor College and Norwood High School before beginning an acting course at the South Australian Castings Agency in Adelaide. After completing one and a half years of a two-and-a-half-year program there, and having been rejected by the Sydney drama school NIDA, he transferred to the United States through his job as a shoe salesman for Florsheim Shoes and continued studying acting while working. His younger brother Jonathan LaPaglia is also an actor, and his brother Michael works as a car wholesaler in Los Angeles.

LaPaglia's earliest screen credit was a 1985 appearance in an episode of 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 television movie Nitti: The Enforcer. A supporting role as a mobster in Betsy's Wedding came in 1990, and he went on to star in 29th Street as Frank Pesce Jr., the first New York State Lottery winner, alongside Danny Aiello and Lainie Kazan. Further film roles followed in Innocent Blood (1992), So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), The Client (1994), and Empire Records (1995). He made his debut in an Australian production opposite Hugo Weaving in The Custodian (1993) and played a hit man in Bulletproof Heart (1994) alongside Mimi Rogers. He also starred opposite future wife Gia Carides in the romantic comedy Paperback Romance (1994).

LaPaglia's Broadway career spans 1995 to 2010 and includes three productions: Lend Me a Tenor, A View from the Bridge, and The Rose Tattoo. His stage debut earned him a Theatre World Award in 1995. During 1997 and 1998, he appeared in the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, portraying the protagonist Eddie Carbone. That performance brought him both the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play, both in 1998. He also played Tito Merelli in Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Tenor on Broadway. Prior to the opening of A View from the Bridge, LaPaglia received the pilot script for The Sopranos and met creator David Chase to discuss the role of Tony Soprano, but his Broadway commitment and other factors prevented him from taking the part.

On television, LaPaglia played Jimmy Wyler in the second and final season of the crime drama Murder One. From 2000 to 2004, he appeared in eight episodes of the NBC sitcom Frasier, including the series finale, as Daphne Moon's brother Simon Moon. That recurring role earned him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. From 2002 to 2009, he starred as Jack Malone in the CBS crime drama Without a Trace, for which he received a Golden Globe Award in 2004 and co-wrote an episode titled "Deep Water." He later starred in Neil Jordan's series Riviera from 2017 to 2020 and played Vito Rizzuto in the Canadian television series Bad Blood beginning in 2017.

LaPaglia's film work continued with Spike Lee's Summer of Sam (1999), Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999), and Road to Perdition (2002). He co-starred opposite Sigourney Weaver in The Guys (2002), a film about New York firefighters who died in the World Trade Center attacks, and also performed the role onstage, rotating with Bill Murray and others. He voiced a skua in Happy Feet (2006) and reprised the role in Happy Feet Two (2011). In Australia, he took on major film roles in Looking for Alibrandi (2000), Lantana (2001), The Bank (2001), Balibo (2009), and Holding the Man (2015). In Balibo, he played real-life Australian journalist Roger East in a political thriller about the 1975 killing of five Australian journalists by the Indonesian Army in East Timor.

LaPaglia has received 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 was also nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Holding the Man at the 5th AACTA Awards in 2015. From around 2012, he took on increasing amounts of work in Australia, including the Julian Assange biopic Underground (2012), the comedy Mental (2012), the miniseries Sunshine, and a role in the fifth season of the comedy series Rake in 2018. In 2015, he returned to Adelaide to star in A Month of Sundays as Frank, a real estate agent who forms a friendship with an elderly woman played by Julia Blake.