‘My marriage didn’t fail’ says Anthony LaPaglia, who divorced wife for a younger woman

ANTHONY LaPaglia has a simple message for those who judge him for divorcing his wife for a much younger woman: ‘I don’t care what your opinion is’.

TONGUES started wagging last year when the news broke Anthony LaPaglia was divorcing his wife of 17 years, Gia Carides, to take up with a Melbourne woman 30 years his junior.

But the Without A Trace star says he’s not fussed about what other people think

“My attitude is that if I don’t know someone — and it’s no disrespect to anyone out there — then I don’t care what their opinion is because they’re not me, they’re not in my life and they can have all the opinions they like — they don’t know what went on,” he says.

“Outsiders are relatively unimportant to me, as long as the people involved know what went on.”

Carides (Strictly Ballroom, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2) is LaPaglia’s second wife — they met at a party, co-starred in 1994 rom-com Lucky Break and married in 1998.

But after being touted as the very model for an enduring Hollywood relationship, in March 2015 LaPaglia filed for divorce citing “irreconcilable differences”. A month earlier he’d been spotted holding hands with 26-year-old Alexandra Henkel while filming drama A Month Of Sundays in Adelaide.

The exclusive Brentwood family home went on the market for a cool $15 million and Carides and LaPaglia now share custody of 13-year-old daughter Bridget.

MORE: The Aussie movies coming in 2016

Anthony Lapaglia with his ex-wife Gia Carides at the premiere of Man of Steel.

“People say ‘it’s failed’,” LaPaglia explains of his marriage. “My attitude is that it didn’t. Twenty years is a long time for any relationship and so many positive and great things came out of it — my daughter being one of them ... It’s an emotionally tough thing to go through but it happens and it’s about adjusting to the fact that people change, life changes.”

Refreshingly open and opinionated for a public figure, LaPaglia, 57, says the pair simply grew apart. “With each age bracket you hit, whether you realise it or not, you’re evolving into who you are. And sometimes in a relationship they line up and sometimes they go in opposite directions. It really comes down to: At what point is the relationship no longer a happy or joyous thing to be in?

“It’s always a 50/50 proposition … and they don’t go wrong for any one reason, there’s a million reasons they’ve gone wrong and they’re all so small and incremental along the way you don’t notice them, and then the file builds and you reach this crossroads.”

Although he’s much more animated, there are some echoes of LaPaglia’s life in director Matthew Saville’s A Month of Sundays. The film follows Frank, a divorced Adelaide real estate agent in the grip of middle-aged ennui who gets a new lease of life after befriending an elderly woman (Julia Blake). LaPaglia jokes he’s had more than one midlife crisis. “A lot of people get to a point in their life where they go: this is not what I thought would happen when I was 18. What decisions happened along the way where I’m not fulfilled any more? Did I screw up? What did I miss? That’s happened to me.”

Anthony La Paglia with his new partner, Alexandra Henkel.

The gossip sites haven’t shied away from suggesting his relationship with a much younger woman could be symptomatic. Tattooed, and sometimes dyeing his beard, LaPaglia reportedly gave Henkel a new Mercedes Benz for her 26th birthday last year. She uses a snap of the pair as her Facebook profile picture.

Although LaPaglia doesn’t directly discuss the relationship, he suggests life is too short not to seek out happiness — even at the risk of social disapproval.

“Do you conform to society’s idea of what is correct or do you do what makes you happy?” LaPaglia muses. “Even though it sounds selfish I equate it — as a joke — to when they do the instructional displays in aeroplanes and the oxygen mask comes down they always say put yours on first … you can’t help the other person unless you help yourself first.

“I think you as an individual have to find out what makes you a happier, hopefully better, human being.”

Anthony LaPaglia returned to Adelaide for the first time in decades to film A Month of Sundays.

A former Adelaide boy, LaPaglia returned there last February for the first time in three decades to film the drama (opposite John Clarke, who LaPaglia thought was a real comic find, until he was informed Clarke’s been a comedy legend in Australia for years). LaPaglia left SA in 1982 to pursue success in America, which didn’t come until he’d dropped his Australian accent. It’s slowly returning, particularly when he’s angry or tired. He worked regularly throughout the ‘90s in So I Married An Axe Murderer, Summer Of Sam, Analyze That and Lantana and won an Emmy for his guest role on Frasier in 2002. However it was playing Jack Malone in Without a Trace between 2002 and 2009 that turned him into a major star and saw him pick up a Golden Globe. He admits being relieved when it was over — the workload was punishing and he felt the series was becoming stale. “Once it became a success no one wanted to change the formula,” he says. “My belief is that year to year you have to reinvent it and shake it up a bit.”

Since then LaPaglia’s worked more frequently in Australia including Balibo, Holding the Man and the upcoming second season of The Code.

Anthony LaPaglia says he had a lucky childhood, if a little dull.

Adelaide’s “sleepy country town feel” hasn’t changed much he says, and he has fond memories of growing up there.

“I’ve got a 13-year-old daughter and sometimes I feel sorry for her because she doesn’t get to run in a pack out on the streets,” he says. “My brother and I would get up at 6 in the morning and come home at five and my parents never asked one question about: where were you?”

“You had to use your imagination more and there were large stretches of boredom that drove you into a creative place, so I think unintentionally it was good training for what was to happen later.”

SEE A Month Of Sundays opens today.

Originally published as ‘My marriage didn’t fail’ says Anthony LaPaglia, who divorced wife for a younger woman