Interview: Anthony LaPaglia - actor on the trail of betrayal Down Under

Published on Thursday 21 April 2011 11:31

Anthony LaPaglia hopes his latest role as a reporter investigating the murder of journalists in an invasion tacitly backed by Western powers has brought truth to light

SITTING in a back room of the Glasgow Film Theatre, Anthony LaPaglia is looking surprisingly fresh for someone who has just flown 5,000 miles. Best known as grizzled FBI agent Jack Malone in the hit missing persons drama Without A Trace, and, before that, as the wayward brother (with the wayward accent) of Daphne Moon in Frasier, the Australian-born, Hollywood-based actor has flown half-way round the world for the low-key Glasgow Film Festival premiere of Balibo, a hard-hitting drama about Australia's inaction during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.

His willingness to go the extra mile to support what he admits is a relatively small film is largely down to its subject matter - although having shot Terence Davies's adaptation of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth in Glasgow just over a decade ago, it doesn't hurt that he also has a real fondness for Scotland.

"Oh yeah, I had a great time here," he says. "Glaswegians have a reputation for hard-drinking and a great sense of humour - and they lived up to it." Spending his downtime exploring the West Coast and the Highlands, he remembers stumbling across the locations from Local Hero, and being particularly happy to find the famous red telephone box. "I didn't realise there was an actual working phone box, so I ended up calling my girlfriend at the time - who is now my wife - and said to her, 'You will never believe where I'm calling you from.'"

Which is certainly a change from his first introduction to Scottish culture via the cult Mike Myers comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer. That film required LaPaglia to don a kilt and bear witness to the future Shrek star performing an alarming bagpipe-accompanied rendition of Rod Stewart's Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? It was, he says, a blast to film, which is plainly evident from the way LaPaglia can be seen genuinely cracking up during the scenes in which Myers rants at him in a comedy Caledonian burr.

As it happens, Balibo also has a Scottish connection - albeit one with a very serious and tragic dimension. It's the true story of the Balibo Five, a group of Australian-based broadcast journalists who were murdered while attempting to cover Indonesia's incursion into East Timor in 1975. Among them was the Scottish-born Malcolm Rennie.

"Malcolm was born in Scotland, grew-up in Scotland, and then emigrated to Australia and became an on-camera reporter," says LaPaglia, elaborating on how Rennie came to be involved in the terrible events that cost him and colleagues - Greg Shackleton, Tony Stewart, Gary Cunningham and fellow Brit migr Brian Peters - their lives. "At that time Australia afforded people opportunities that they might not have had back home, and I know Malcolm had come out there initially to take a look, and ended up falling in love with the place."The film is not specifically Rennie's story, though. Instead it tells the dual stories of the events leading up to the Balibo Five's murders, and those leading up to the death of Roger East (LaPaglia), the veteran Australian journalist coaxed into retracing their steps a month later in an effort to find out what happened to them. In the process it exposes one of the most shameful chapters in recent Australian history, drawing attention not only to the genocide perpetrated against the people of East Timor (it's estimated that at least 200,000 people were killed), but also the Australian government's reluctance to intervene, as well as its complicity in suppressing the real story behind what happened.

LaPaglia, who was a 16-year-old schoolboy in Adelaide when the events depicted in the film happened, was only vaguely aware of the story at the time and didn't comprehend the magnitude of what was really going on until he was given a copy of Jill Joliffe's book Cover-Up (upon which the film is based) in 2001.

"I moved to the US in 1982 and in the US it was never a story. Occasionally you'd hear a tiny snippet of information about Eastern Timor, but nothing that would make you stand up and pay attention. I had no idea there was mass genocide going on between 1975 and 1999. Even in Australia, most people were shocked, because East Timor is about an hour's flight from Darwin. So within a very short distance there was mass murder happening that the Australian government was aware of - but it just wasn't getting reported in the mainstream press."

The reason, says LaPaglia, was largely down to trade agreements between Australia and Indonesia and the huge oil and natural gas reserves off the coast of East Timor. "It all comes back to that," he sighs. He reckons that's also why the Australian government dragged its feet when it came to investigating the disappearance of the Balibo Five.

Indeed, how little the government cared became apparent to LaPaglia when he discovered an invoice issued by the Australian Embassy to The Nine Network (Rennie's employers) requesting the station reimburse it for a $7 wreath laid at a funeral service that was held for the journalists in Jakarta in 1975. (Fragments of their remains had been delivered in a shoebox to the Australian ambassador.) "This is how much the Australian government gave a shit about these guys," spits LaPaglia.

"It's disgusting, but it's a matter of public record now."Listening to LaPaglia talk, it's no surprise to learn that Balibo caused "a political shit-storm" when it opened in Australia two years ago. Given his clear passion for the issues it has raised, however, it is surprising that Balibo is the first film he's made in his native country since the blistering Lantana in 2001.

The gruelling seven-year production treadmill he was on for Without a Trace probably had something to do with this (he made Balibo in between shooting the show's final two seasons). TV has been good to LaPaglia, however. He got his first big break taking over the lead in Murder One, the influential mid-1990s US legal drama, and he won an Emmy for Frasier and a Golden Globe for Without a Trace. None of which is bad going for a former professional footballer (he played for Adelaide City) who only discovered acting after a girl he liked insisted they go to the theatre on their first date. Subsequently moving to New York, he spent the next seven years studying to be a thesp.

Why so long? He laughs. "I would never put the two on the same level, but if you want to be a doctor you have to study for six or seven years and I felt like I shouldn't really do anything until I understood the craft. I didn't really even do a film until I was in my early thirties. I just loved doing theatre."

To this end, his next film should help him indulge that love: he's reprising his Toni Award-winning performance from Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge in a new film version co-starring Vera Farmiga.

For the moment, though, he's just pleased to have the opportunity to get the word out about Balibo. "It was seven years of my life from the time I first read it to when we started filming" he says. "It's worth travelling around for."

• Balibo is out on DVD/Blu-ray on 25 April