The Los Angeles-based Australian actor talks fame, failure and his father’s last words
he Trenerry Reserve, an off-leash dog park high above the southern headland of Coogee Bay, on one of the last warm days of the late Sydney summer is busy. Locals watch their tiny dogs play and suburban tourists have piled in for a blast of sunshine and a walk with spectacular views. “I usually find the ocean very relaxing,” says Anthony LaPaglia. “Contemplative. But today, it’s too busy for me.”
He’s not a guy who needs to warm up to conversation. For the next 90 minutes , LaPaglia talks non-stop. The initial grumpiness quickly subsides. He’s warm and entertaining, full of barbed and/or self-deprecating anecdotes about growing up in Adelaide, the eldest son of a volatile Italian car mechanic, his soccer ambitions and the time he went to a “sports shrink” to understand himself better.
That was before he took a call from Neil Armfield, who had directed him in the film Holding the Man, released in 2015. The opportunity was too good to refuse – and not just because the play is a classic and the part, a monster. “We had a very adversarial relationship, from day one, until he died,” LaPaglia says. “We were arguing because he wouldn’t take his medication. He had aggressive cancer and he only took Panadol! He told me to go fuck myself a few days before he died and that was pretty much the last thing he ever said to me.”LaPaglia says this with both exasperation and compassion. “He was who he was, until the day he died. He had a tough life. People called him a spick and a dago. He got into fist fights.
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