Anthony LaPaglia might hang with the Hollywood elite but he’s still just the boy from Beefacres
He’s an award-winning Hollywood star who can pick and choose his projects. But Anthony La Paglia hasn’t forgotten his humble origins in Adelaide - and finds he still relates better to the crew on set than the A-list party crowd.
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Anthony LaPaglia’s in the mood for a chat. He’s been in Melbourne shooting Nine’s Halifax: Retribution, far away from his 17-year-old daughter Bridget. The Golden Globe-winning actor welcomes me warmly into the bar at the Como Hotel, his home away from home for four months.
The greeting’s even more warmer when he learns I’m from his hometown. And from his side of the city.
“I grew up in a suburb that nobody believes existed … Beefacres,” LaPaglia says. I confess I have never heard of it, “No-one has,” he laughs. “Not even taxi drivers.”
When he was last in Adelaide in 2015, shooting the film a A Month of Sundays, LaPaglia hopped in a cab, wanting to see the house where he grew up.
“I asked the driver ‘can you take me to Beefacres?’ and he was all ‘I’ve been here for 40 years and I have never heard of Beefacres’.”
Determined to prove it wasn’t a figment of his imagination, LaPaglia directed the driver northeast.
And finally, tucked away in what is now Windsor Gardens, he found one of the last remaining indicators of the suburb – a sign for Beefacres Community Centre. ‘I went ‘ha … see’,” LaPaglia laughs.
It’s not the only change he noticed on that trip – his first back home in some 30 years.
He couldn’t believe how much the once wide-open spaces of the suburbs had filled in. His grandmother’s house in Klemzig was once at the end of suburbia, looking over open fields.
The 61-year-old started his school life at St Pius X in Windsor Gardens.
The nuns suggested to his parents that he’d be better suited to life outside the Catholic education system. LaPaglia laughs again, as he recalls being a budding geologist and taking rocks to school and questioning how the nuns could teach the earth was only thousands of years old, when scientists would date them at millions of years old.
He truly appreciates growing up in Adelaide, especially now he’s bringing up his daughter Bridget in Los Angeles.
“She’s a great kid – she’s always got something going on and the phone is constant,” LaPaglia says of the teen he shares with former wife Gia Carides .
“She will say to me ‘what was it like when you grew up and how did you do anything? She was like ‘what’s the difference?’ and I would say – and I mean this – in the nicest way, ‘it was bigger, dumber and easier’ and I liked it. It was easy to be a kid.”
He remembers heading off on his bike with his brother – fellow actor and Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia – at 6am in the morning and not returning until nightfall.
“I just remember the freedom we had was unbelievable – there was no ‘what have you been doing?’,” he says. “It was just ‘get in here and have dinner’. I feel sorry for the kids now that don’t have that anymore.”
La Paglia’s career took him far, far away from his idyllic childhood.
And filled a resume with an extensive and diverse list of credits across film, television and theatre,including a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Jack Malone in Without a Trace.
Our chat late last year came before COVID-19 started its relentless march across the globe, changing our way of life - possibly forever.
LaPaglia has now been unable to see his PR consultant wife Alexandra Henkel since May. They were reduced to celebrating their second anniversary over Instagram. She’s in Melbourne, working. He’s presently at home in LA’s affluent Brentwood in lockdown with Bridget.
In October, however, he was excited to be reuniting with Rebecca Gibney – who he starred with in the comedy Mental – for the latest series of Halifax FP.
LaPaglia is Inspector Tom Saracen. A sniper is terrorising the city. Saracen approaches Jane Halifax (Gibney) to help him. Now an academic, it’s been almost 20 years since she worked in the field.
While it was his character who had to entice Gibney’s on screen alter ego back to the profiling world, it was Gibney who texted LaPaglia, convincing him to come and work with her in Australia. “I’ve known Rebecca … Jesus well, for Rebecca’s sake I won’t say how long, but a very long time,” he says.
“I had met (Halifax creator) Roger Simpson in LA and he said I want to work with you and then I started getting texts from Rebecca, so I thought I better do it.
“My job was easy this time. She was executive producing and she was on all the time – involved in the casts and the scripts. All the stuff I used to do. I was just on her coat tails and I would tease her about it. My nickname for her was Sister Mary Margaret because she wants to makes sure that everybody is OK and that’s another added burden, making sure that everybody on the crew is OK. Man, she took it all on and she was a champ.”
Gibney did not, however, manage to rope LaPaglia into one of her famous Instagram singing and dancing videos. “No. I just said the grumpy, old man won’t do that cos that s– t goes on Instragam," he says.
LaPaglia is on social media, but laughs that his reach is nowhere near his daughter’s.
“So I have 3000 followers and my daughter has 50,000 followers,” he says.
“She’s a photographer so she gets gigs out of it. I never had to say to her ‘go and get a job’. She just got one.”
LaPaglia loved being back on a laid-back Australian set. There are massive differences from the US.
“The main thing I miss about Australia is the smart-arse attitude,” he says. “They don’t care who you are. There’s a director of photography here and she’d throw in a snide comment about my acting. I’d say ‘can I have some help with my lines?’ she’d say ‘it would help if you learnt them’.”
Contrast that with a US set where there’s quite the hierarchy, the crew not encouraged or even allowed to speak to the actors.
“I think that’s a shame – my dad was a mechanic, I grew up in Beefacres,” LaPaglia says, with a wry grin. “The crew are my people, upper management is not.”
It’s the penultimate day of the Halifax shoot when we chat and LaPaglia’s feeling conflicted about heading home to the States.
He loves Melbourne and has good friends there.
He wasn’t even sure there was a house to return to. It was in the midst of the deadly California wildfires and his property was a few blocks from the evacuation zone.
“I think it’s fine but hopefully it’s not a pile of sticks. And now the show is coming to an end I’m really going to miss it. I’ll really miss being here. ”
He was looking forward to some quiet time with no projects in his immediate future. LaPaglia can pick and choose roles now. It’s taken him 30 years but if he wants to do an indie movie that’s interesting, but zero money, he can.
Or, conversely, if he’s offered work that will help cover his daughter’s future college tuition, he’ll do that. He knows he’s one of the lucky ones.
LaPaglia would like to start a production company in Australia that creates works here and in Los Angeles.
“There’s an enormous pocket of real talent here,” he says.
“I think that there’s a real demand for Australian content. It was all a lot harder five years ago, but now there’s such a need for content for streaming services. I mean they’ve got stuff from Uzbekistan. There’s just a real need to fill the binge market. I do it – I love binge watching. I just really want to tap into the talent.”
And not just talent in front of the camera, but the hardworking crews too.
“Look I don’t love actors – I mean I’m talking as a general rule. Very few of my friends are actors,” LaPaglia shares.
“But I like writers and directors. And plumbers.” And journalists? “I love journalists – especially if they’re nice, Lisa. And from Adelaide.”
And just like that, it’s been almost an hour and we have to wrap the interview. LaPaglia’s reluctant to stop sharing stories, but he must. There’s planes home for all of us to catch.
Halifax: Retribution Tuesday, August 25, 8.45pm, Nine