When actor Anthony LaPaglia describes his upbringing in Adelaide during the 1960s and ’70s, it’s easy to see why he wanted to get out – and why returning is still slightly vexed after all these years.

“I always have a bit of trepidation going back to Adelaide because I tried so hard to escape it very quickly,” says the award-winning actor, who packed his bags at age 19 and didn’t look back.

Now 67 and having forged an international career across stage and screen, the former Norwood High School student is heading home this month to star in Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Death of a Salesman.

It’s a theatrical homecoming that has been almost 50 years in the making and will see this boy from “Beefacres” – an actual suburb now known as Windsor Gardens – make his Adelaide stage debut.

Returning home brings mixed emotions for LaPaglia, who recalls early life in the city of churches with his father Edigio “Eddie”, a mechanic and car dealer, mother Maria, a secretary and model, and brothers Michael and Jonathan.

“It was a different time and a different place,” he says. “Basically the society I grew up in, I was the son of an immigrant mechanic, so the aspirational level I was allowed to have was quite low.

“Like, I could be a mechanic, or an accountant or work for the government.

“The idea of acting didn’t come from Adelaide, let’s put it that way. I just found it really oppressive. First of all, the whole ‘wog’ thing was quite big back then, so there was definitely a horrible kind of prejudice against Mediterranean immigrants.

“I watched Aussies come in and treat my dad like dirt. They had a real superiority attitude about stuff, and my father didn’t take s–t, either.

“I watched some Aussie guy giving him s–t about Italian shoes or something and my father just let him have one right in the head.”

LaPaglia admits his father sometimes had a default setting of anger, and while their relationship was often fraught, he was by his father’s side when he died from cancer aged 80. LaPaglia’s mother Maria, 93, lives in Brisbane and he will see her in coming weeks.

“Dad was a very complicated man, he lost his mother when he was eight and he went to work as a mechanic’s assistant at eight, so his childhood ended at eight and that’s where mine was supposed to end as well,” LaPaglia says. “That’s what caused the conflict. I had to be grown up by 10, like a fully responsible adult at 10, and I just didn’t see it that way.”

As a kid, LaPaglia was close to older brother Michael. The two would roam the streets from dusk until dawn, riding their bikes or tram hopping. Their grandfather was a tram conductor, and the two older LaPaglia boys and their mates, whom LaPaglia describes as “little thugs”, would go from Gillies Plains or Klemzig to Glenelg and “we never paid”.

“We had a kid in the street, Alan something, who was a couple years older than all the other kids and he used to beat the crap out of the younger kids,” he says.

“We were walking down the street one day, and it started up and my brother Mikey, who was quite small, just went to him and just landed one right in the head, decked this kid, put him down, and he was like the hero of the street.”

LaPaglia says he was not as close to his younger brother Jonathan, largely due to the wider 10-year age gap. Jonathan went on to study medicine before following his older brother into acting, most famously ending up as the host of reality TV show Australian Survivor.

LaPaglia’s career path was less linear. He had a variety of jobs after leaving school, including shoe salesman and kitchen hand.

“I used to work at a place in Hindley Street called The Desert Sands, a greasy spoon joint,” he says. “I loved it there; you could get breakfast at midnight kind of thing.”

He also remembers hanging out at popular Adelaide nightclub, Jules in Hindley Street, where “you’d stand having s–tty drinks, watered-down drinks, and girls not wanting to talk to you”.

It was a friend who was studying law and wanted to become a barrister who raised the idea of acting classes, keen to improve his confidence in front of an audience. LaPaglia tagged along to the lessons at SA Casting, but the duo was kicked out after a couple of classes for misbehaviour.

After that, there was nothing keeping the adventurous young tearaway in Adelaide, so LaPaglia headed for Sydney, and then New York.

“I didn’t really go there thinking I was going to become a working actor at all, I just wanted to be somewhere else other than Adelaide,” he says.

“When I got to New York I felt comfortable in my own skin for the first time. I just fit in there right away.”

Anthony LaPaglia with his Death of a Salesman castmates Josh Helman, Ben O’Toole and Alison Whyte. Photograph Daniel Boud

The young hopeful took acting lessons, perfecting his American accent by watching Al Pacino movies, and made ends meet with odd jobs including crewing on TV commercials.

“We did a pineapple commercial and, at the end of the shoot, there were literally hundreds of tins of pineapples so my friend and I just got as many as we could, 20 or 30 cans, and that’s what we ate,” he says.

“It took me a long time, like eight or nine years, it was not overnight. I was tending bars and installing sprinkler systems in New Jersey and stuff, just any job I could get.

“But it was never a hard slog. I loved every minute of it. In fact, that’s the part I miss now. The journey there was way more interesting than being there.”

Minor television roles kickstarted things, before LaPaglia landed his first role in a feature film, Cold Steel, in 1987.

Broadway also beckoned and the actor’s performance as Eddie Carbone in another Arthur Miller work, A View from the Bridge, proved a career-defining moment. He walked away with a Tony Award in 1998.

The play also sparked a deep friendship with the award-winning playwright, who was famously married to Marilyn Monroe.

“I spent a lot of time with him, and he was a very impressive human,” LaPaglia says. “When I met him, he was about 80 and he walked into the rehearsal space and women from 16 to 60, it was like a magnet, boom.”

Other high-profile roles included playing Simon Moon in comedy series Frasier from 2000-2004, for which LaPaglia won an Emmy for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series.

But it was the breakout role playing Jack Malone, an FBI missing persons agent, in Without a Trace that really put LaPaglia on the mainstream map, as well as earning him a Golden Globe in 2004.

His Australian screen credits include Lantana, Balibo, Holding the Man, Nitram and Boy Swallows Universe, adding three AACTAs to his awards tally.

“When you think about acting, it’s a ridiculous hobby,” he says, reflecting on his longevity and success in the industry. “You run around in clothes you wouldn’t normally wear pretending to be people that you’re not, so it’s the ultimate kind of escapism.

“Making it look effortless is what’s hard. If it looks like you’re working, you’re not doing it right.”

These days, LaPaglia is based mainly in California, where he says he’s recently downsized from a large home to an apartment, selling some of the trappings of his success, including a collection of watches and luxury cars.

So, why the downsizing?

“Getting divorced probably – it’s a good way to get rid of a lot of things,” he laughs. “The best thing about my life in the last couple of years is that I have divested myself of everything.”

LaPaglia most recently split from wife Alexandra Henkel, 30 years his junior. Previously he was previously married to Australian actor Gia Carides for 17 years – they share a daughter, Bridget, now 24.

Being a dad has brought a happiness to LaPaglia’s life that he says is “hard to vocalise without sounding trite”.

“I didn’t even think about having kids and when she was born everything changed and I probably grew up 10 years in one year,” he says.

Bridget is based in New York, where she studied fashion at the Parsons School of Design. She is gradually forging her own creative path.

“I think she’d rather eat glass than become an actor,” LaPaglia jokes when asked if Bridget has any plans to follow in the footsteps of her famous parents.

“She was a super easy and nice kid and still is. I have a very good relationship with her now.”

LaPaglia (right) with Death of a Salesman director Neil Armfield .

In Adelaide, LaPaglia will take to the stage in Death of a Salesman, playing protagonist Willy Loman alongside co-stars Alison Whyte as Linda Loman and Josh Helman and Ben O’Toole as sons Biff and Happy.

The production, which has already played to packed houses in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane, is directed by Neil Armfield, whom LaPaglia says is “one of the best directors I’ve ever worked with”.

“What he brings is intelligence and specificity, but he’s also not a verbose person, he really thinks about what he says,” he says. “It’s like ‘my way or the highway’, but I don’t mind that because I trust him.”

Trust was also an important factor when the idea of a memoir was raised with LaPaglia recently. He had said no to book offers in the past but a serious back injury after a major fall on set saw him laid up with time on his hands.

“I thought that someone else should do a book when I’m dead but part of it was, I had this accident and I wasn’t able to walk more than 50 feet,” he says.

“I didn’t even realise how much damage I’d done but it took a nine-hour operation to fix so I was sitting around not doing anything and somebody came up with the offer.

“At least I could make a living of some description and if they think it’s interesting enough to write a book about, why not?”

One of the conditions of doing the memoir, titled The Life We Choose and due out in October, was that it be real and raw, LaPaglia says.

“It was a bit difficult because there was a trust factor. But, like I said to the publishers, ‘If I’m going to do a book then I’m not going to make it a feel-good story, I’m going to tell the truth about everything, and you could run into some legal problems’,” he says.

“That didn’t put them off actually and there are some things I had to drop, they were too litigious, and other people we skirted around by name changing but you can probably guess who it is.”

The process of examining his life has been cathartic for the charismatic actor, who wanted to call the book No Regrets but “someone had already done that”.

“But I have no regrets actually at all,” he says. “I made some bad choices, some shocking choices, along the way … some colossal errors. But I think I examined my own bad behaviour as much as anybody else and I don’t paint a shining picture of me, let’s put it that way.”

Quizzed on those mistakes, LaPaglia says we’ll just have to read the book. He does reveal, however, that he would tell his younger self not to be so publicity shy.

“I mean I still don’t like doing it, but I used to hate it, and I used to avoid it and it got me into a lot of trouble with the studios,” he says. “I kind of crucified my own career to some degree but I wouldn’t change it.

“But my advice would be to someone ‘lighten up a little’. I was very serious, about acting in particular. Life I had no regard for, but acting I held in very high regard.”

Death of a Salesman runs from September 26-October 4 at Adelaide’s Festival Theatre. Tickets on sale now.

Republished from SA Life