by
Paul Fischer
Anthony LaPaglia is
fittingly reserved when we meet in a Los Angeles hotel room. 
Never
one to court media attention, the Australian-born actor took some time
off between both fatherhood and a hectic TV schedule, to talk about The
Guys, a moving, eloquent film based on the play in which LaPaglia
had also previously appeared. The first film to address the immediate
after-effects of 9/11, LaPaglia delivers his finest performance to date
as a fire chief who has to deliver a eulogy for his fallen comrades. Dressed
in an elegant, dark blue suit and tie, the Tony and Emmy Award-winning
actor disagrees that making The Guys was somehow cathartic following
9/11, "because that implies that you were able to kind of process
the event and somehow exorcise it from your psyche, so on that level I
would say that it was not cathartic because I did not exorcise it from
my psyche and it didn't really help me to particularly work through the
enormity of that event," the actor explains.
Shooting the film version of the acclaimed play had its
emotional challenges, LaPaglia insists. "The biggest thing was the
sense of obligation that I felt to get it right for the families of the
fire fighters and the fire fighters themselves", LaPaglia explains
when discussing a eulogy scene shot in front of families of those fire-fighters
who perished. You really felt an acute sense of responsibility there."
Making a film dealing with 9/11 could easily danger of exploiting
the tragedy. That was clearly not the case with either the stage play
or film. "What I loved about it was the fact that it was imagined,
not exploited; that it was trying to take a small experience that happened
between two people in New York - a very large experience, in a way that
I think every body could relate to and put it on film; in a way that did
not exploit the moment."
In this Hollywood age of special effects and cinematic scope, The
Guys, directed with an artful simplicity by Jim Simpson,
is something of an anomaly, an essential two-hander shot primarily in
the confines of a magazine editor's apartment. LaPaglia is unconcerned.
"People have a certain expectation of what films are supposed to
be now and I always question that; like who wrote the rule book for these
cinematic experiences. To me, part of what I love doing is story telling
which is why I like being an actor, the ability to get out there, become
a character and then tell a story. And I think that somewhere along the
line in our culture, we lost that and we are not that interested in story
telling anymore."
LaPaglia has no doubt that despite these troubled times of war and international
upheaval, the time is ripe for a film such as The Guys. "I
think the movie is incredibly timely. The difficulty with all small independent
films is that you're dealing in basically an entertainment market and
therefore in the entertainment market what gets a movie seen is how much
money you spend on prints and advertising and there is a whole political
agenda in getting the film out there and getting it seen.' But as to the
current war itself, the actor is one of many celebrities who have
very strong opinions as to the war itself. "I think
something strange has been happening in this country since September 11.
I think it was a truly stunning event that actually shocked people into
inertia, to the point where we have an entire country which is basically
letting the government dictate a policy that will turn out, I think in
history, to be a very unpopular one; and in some ways damaging, if we
have reached the point where we are going it alone if necessary 
so
you suddenly go from being a coalition into an aggressive force. I am
not saying that Saddam Hussein is an innocent party that doesn't deserve
some scrutiny, but rather, our foreign policy is really questionable right
now and our decision-making policy seems to be completely irrational,"
says an angry LaPaglia. "I would like people to see this film, just
to realize how they felt in the first week after 9/11 happened in order
to bring some humanity back into it and still, maybe, wake people up a
little bit."
Happily married to fellow actor Gia Carides
[currently co-starring in TV's My Big Fat Greek Life], the pair
recently welcomed their first child, Bridget. It was the prospect of impending
fatherhood that led LaPaglia back to the regular grind of series television
in the hit drama Without a Trace. "At the time that I made
the decision to go back do a series, Gia was probably about three months
pregnant, and we had a long conversation about me and my inability to
deal with authority," the actor says smilingly. "And with television
to a certain degree, you have to capitulate on a certain level and a certain
place, so her advice to me was, you don't have to do this. And, I said,
that the alternative is that I do films and very few of them shoot in
L.A. or New York. So the prospect of me running away to Toronto or Vancouver
for two months at a time and missing that much time with my daughter was
just not appealing. So I made a choice that if I could find the right
television project, that I would much rather spend the first five years
of my daughter's life with her. I have been very lucky in my career so
far, in that I have had like a really good one. I have done lots of interesting
stuff on stage, on films, on television and I have pretty much covered
the gamut and enjoyed all mediums so I don't feel as if I'm missing out
of anything."
LaPaglia decided on Without a Trace, in which he stars as the
leader of an elite FBI Missing Persons unit, because "I looked at
several scripts and some of them were just me starring, some of them were
ensemble, but still me starring and then, I read this script which was
truly ensemble. I kind of anchor this show, but I don't by any means carry
it. Not only that, half of
the show is done in flashback, because you are talking about the victim's
life which I have nothing to do with, so, it meant that I had a really
good working schedule and that I was not working 18 hours a day; so I
get to see my daughter in the morning and at night."
LaPaglia is still trying to fulfill one great ambition, to bring Arthur
Miller's A View From The Bridge to the screen. His Broadway
performance garnered him both a Drama Desk and Tony Award. "Yes it
is still happening; but it's a long process." In the meantime he
is happy to savour fatherhood and the fruits of a distinguished career
that shows no sign of waning.