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Name: Anthony LaPaglia
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Date of Birth:
January 31, 1959
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Place of Birth:
Adelaide, Australia
Mini-bio:
Despite spending the first 25 years of his life in Adelaide, Australia, Anthony LaPaglia is best known for playing street-savvy Italian New Yorkers. This was not, however, LaPaglia's original plan. Ra... read morether than testing the waters of show business, LaPaglia traveled to the United States intending to pursue a full-time teaching career. As luck would have it, however, one of LaPaglia's odd jobs was a small role in Cold Steel (1987), a low-budget detective drama. LaPaglia began pursuing theater and television in his spare time -- one of his more notable early performances was in 1988's Frank Nitti: The Enforcer -- and considered himself a full-time actor by 1989, when he made his feature-film debut in Slaves of New York. It was 1990, however, when the young actor earned critical recognition for his role as an exceedingly polite mobster in Betsy's Wedding.LaPaglia continued to build his resumé throughout the early '90s, most of which he spent playing either kindly policemen or good-hearted mobsters, and was delighted to work alongside a variety of noted actors so early in his career. Among those actors were Alan Alda in Betsy's Wedding, Michael Keaton in One Good Cop (1991), and Nathan Lane, Sharon Stone, and Kevin Bacon in He Said, She Said (1992). Later in 1992, LaPaglia could be found playing his first leading role in George Gallo's gangster farce 29th Street. Though the film did not fare particularly well, audiences were nonetheless impressed with LaPaglia's intensity, and he played a more serious gangster with great success opposite Susan Sarandon in The Client (1994). The actor switched gears for his next handful of films; in Mixed Nuts (1994) he played a disillusioned Santa Claus, while Empire Records (1995) found him as a down-on-his-luck store manager, and the Australian-helmed Brilliant Lies (1996) featured him as the defendant in a sketchy sexual-harassment case.Despite a smattering of mediocre films between 1995 and the early 2000s, LaPaglia continued to earn critical acclaim for many of his endeavors, such as Steve Buscemi's directorial debut, Trees Lounge (1996), for which LaPaglia joined a star-studded supporting cast, as well as for his role as a detective in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam (1999). Luckily for him, 2000 and 2001 proved excellent for his career, as it was during this period that he played a wealthy businessman in The House of Mirth and an adulterous police detective in Lantana. In addition to receiving international success, Lantana earned LaPaglia the prestigious Best Actor award from the Australian Film Institute, as well as a nomination from the Film Critics Circle. In the meantime, he was adding several major television credits to his resumé, including a starring role as the head of the FBI's Missing Persons Squad on CBS's Without a Trace, and a recurring role on the long-running sitcom Frasier, a performance for which he would receive an Emmy in 2002. Far removed from his fledgling days as a teacher, 2002 also found LaPaglia working with Val Kilmer for The Salton Sea; Sigourney Weaver for The Guys; Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal in Analyze That; and Eric Stoltz in Happy Hour. In 2003, after filming Manhood with Janeane Garofalo and the late John Ritter, LaPaglia agreed to star in director Josh Sternfeld's Winter Solstice (2004). ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
Anthony LaPaglia mini-bio: A former school teacher in his native Australia, engaging character player Anthony LaPaglia moved to NYC and began acting in the theater, his big break coming Off-Broadway in "Bouncers", a play in which he demonstrated his versatility and talent for accents while rendering eight different characters. Guest work on series like "Amazing Stories" (NBC), "Magnum, P.I." (CBS), "Hunter" (NBC) and "Trapper John, M.D." (CBS) preceded his landing the title role of the TV biopic "Frank Nitti: The Enforcer" (ABC, 1988), after which he made his feature debut in a small role in James Ivory's "Slaves of New York" (1989). LaPaglia gained widespread attention for his scene-stealing performance in Alan Alda's mild comedy "Betsy's Wedding" (1990), playing the surprisingly courtly and charming nephew of a Mafia boss. Similar, and often all too standardized, roles followed as the industry's "typing" of LaPaglia as characters "whose names end in a vowel or who carry a gun" provided a steady diet of work. Although George Gallo's "29th Street" (1991) did cast him as a NYC Italian-American, the richly seasoned script offered him one of his better roles as the son of Danny Aiello, and he portrayed Barry 'The Blade', a flashy organized crime underling in the commercial courtroom suspense drama "The Client" (1994) with the express purpose of catching the eye of independent filmmakers whose work he prefers. The successful strategy led to his critically-acclaimed angst-ridden hit man in "Bulletproof Heart" (1995) and a part in indie-heavyweight Steve Buscemi's "Trees Lounge" (1997). LaPaglia increased his profile further with his TV series debut on the ABC legal drama "Murder One", joining the cast for the 1996-97 season as Jimmy Wilder, a former district attorney turned defense counsel who was willing to bend the law to his clients' needs. Despite offering a strong performance, he shed few tears when its cancellation freed him from the grind of series production. LaPaglia has returned again and again to indulge himself with fine portrayals on the NYC stage. 1993 saw him Off-Broadway as the co-star of a Steve Tesich play, "On the Open Road". He received raves for his performance opposite Mercedes Ruehl in the 1995 Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo" and he was back on the Great White Way as Eddie Carbone in a revival of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" (1998), for which he picked up a Tony Award. Among his many TV appearances, LaPaglia garnered a CableACE Award nomination for his work in the HBO movie "Criminal Justice" (1990) and played college basketball coach Jim Valvano in the CBS biopic "Never Give Up: The Jimmy V Story" (1996). LaPaglia has also acted in two Australian features with his significant other and fellow Aussie Gia Carides, "Paperback Romance" (1994) and "Brilliant Lies" (1996). La Paglia appeared in several high profile movies over the next five years, including "Summer of Sam" and "Sweet and Lowdown," both in 1999 and "The House of Mirth" and "Lantana," for which he received rave reviews and a wealth of awards and nominations, in 2001. He also has a brief but memorable recurring stint on the popular sit-com "Frasier" as Daphne's boorish brother Simon Moon, a role that earned him and Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 2002. That same year he also appeared in "The Salton Sea" and starred with Keifer Sutherland in the action movie "Dead Heat." After years of solid performances and the respect of his professional peers, LaPaglia finally achieved mainstream recognition when he took on the lead role of FBI Missing Persons investigator Jack Malone in the popular television crime drama "Without a Trace" (CBS, 2002 - ), for which he won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series Drama in 2004. He also starred alongside Sigourney Weaver in "The Guys" (2003), a film inspired by the heroism of New York City firefighters during the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. After playing a once promising writer hiding in the shadows of his famous author father in the low-budget indie, “Happy Hour” (2003), LaPaglia gave a strong performance as a New Jersey widower trying to get on with life with his two teenage sons (Aaron Stanford & Mark Webber) in the well-reviewed ensemble drama, “Winter Solstice” (2005).
