Veteran actor tries taking a stab at horror

ANTHONY LaPAGLIA

involved and that he might be the bad guy, and he keeps floating back and forth between the good guy and the other guy,” LaPaglia says.

The part’s logistical degree of difficulty kept him involved, too, since Sandberg filmed most of the production out of order, “so my performance is like a jigsaw puzzle where you have to remember where you are each time, and that’s difficult when you get older because you forget.”

Working opposite a youthful cast, including co-headliners Talitha Bateman, 15, and Lulu Wilson, 11, proved to be a less complicated assignment for a few reasons. “I have worked with kids before, and I have a 14-yearold daughter, so that part of it was pretty easy for me,” LaPaglia says. “But I also made the decision that I was not going to interact with them off camera. I wanted them to maintain that feeling of, ‘Who is this guy?’”

Born in Adelaide, the journeyman actor has always kept a low profile. He managed small parts on Aussie shows and in films during the 1980s and moved to L.A. in the early 1990s where he continued to split his efforts between the big and small screens.

From 2002 to 2009 he made his mark portraying FBI agent Jack Malone on the series Without a Trace, and showing up on Frasier as Daphne’s boozy brother Simon, which earned him an Emmy. “When I started in the business they had those medium-range movies that I might fit into but now it’s either really small or those $150-million movies where I don’t always fit,” says LaPaglia. “And to my own detriment, I don’t always have a good pulse on pop culture of the moment and never have.”

Next up are two limited-run shows. LaPaglia plays Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto in the mini-series Bad Blood airing in the fall on City and FX. He also co-stars in the Aussie show Sunshine. In it, the actor plays the coach of a Sudanese-Australian basketball phenom being investigated by the police. “Sometimes, I do something for the quality of the project and sometimes I do it for the paycheque because I have a mortgage to pay,” LaPaglia says. “One thing I’ve always prided myself in is that I have a realistic view of where I stand in the business.”