Anthony and Michael live very different lives. Here’s what we know.

Australian Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia was all set for a medical career – until he was inspired by his actor brother Anthony’s success in the entertainment industry.

Long before he graced screens as Dr Patrick McNaughton on the TV drama Love Child, JLP was working shifts in an emergency ward in Adelaide as a doctor.

“I am still a doctor, I just haven’t practised in a long time, so don’t ask me to do much more than a Band-Aid,” the star admitted to the Daily Telegraph’s Confidential in 2022. “I have been off the bench for way too long.”
Art imitates life: JLP as Dr Patrick McNaughton on the hit series, Love Child, back in 2014. (Credit: Channel Ten)
But, by his own admission, Jonathan had two facets to his personality – a scientific part and an artistic part, and he felt that by focusing on medicine, he was only answering one of them.

“Shortly after I started working as a doctor, I decided to listen to the voice inside me before it was too late,” the star later told Woman’s Day. “It was now or never, so I decided to explore acting.”

The decision led him to quit his job and move to New York, where he took a two-year drama course at the Circle in the Square Theatre School.

“I was lucky enough to work within a month of graduation,” he revealed. “I landed my first role on a TV show, and it went on from there. But I still had this fantasy of keeping both jobs going. I thought I could work as a doctor part-time.

“It wasn’t to be. Jonathan would go on to quit medicine altogether after scoring his breakthrough American role in New York Undercover in 1996.
Jonathan followed his brother Anthony into acting. (Credit: Getty)

Does Jonathan LaPaglia have a brother?

It was a huge change. Jonathan grew up as the youngest of three boys born to Italian-born mechanic Gedio “Eddy” LaPaglia and his wife, Dutch-born secretary Maria Johannes Brendel.

The pair had emigrated to Australia separately and met in Adelaide, raising the boys, Jonathan, now 55, Anthony, now 66, and Michael, now 62, with working-class roots in Prospect, SA.

What is Anthony LaPaglia famous for?

Anthony, who would go on to rack up an impressive array of theatre, film, and TV credits in his career – including his standout role as Jack Malone, the head of the FBIs Missing Person’s Unit, in Without a Trace –  would return to his late father’s birthplace in Calabria for a TV project as an adult.

“It was fantastic, and it actually helped me understand my father a lot more,” Anthony told ABC News in June 2023.

“I realised what he gave up. I don’t think he was that fond of Australia, to be honest. Back in the ’60s, Italians weren’t particularly well treated, nor were Greeks or anyone from the Mediterranean.

“I think he found himself in Australia and made the best of it. He was an early adopter; his brothers barely spoke English, but my father took English lessons, built a business, and tried to integrate.

“The rest of the family, when you entered their homes, you could be back in Italy; they didn’t really leave Italy. So, when I went to his hometown, I could see what my father was missing. It’s a seaside town, and it’s a very beautiful place, so it gave me a new perspective, a greater understanding.”

“I enjoyed the early difficulties”

Anthony told ABC News that he had “a lot of great memories” growing up in Adelaide, describing it as “big and empty and as a kid you could go out all day and ride your bike around [but] it was also rough”.

“Australia had a very narrow view of anyone from another country unless it was England,” the star revealed. “Everyone wants to go to Italian restaurants now, but that’s the kind of stuff I’d have to dump on the way to school, so I didn’t get tortured for it.

“As I got older, and I started seeing my father go through some stuff at the hands of a bit of racism, that got me a little more worked up,” he went on. “But it was a different time, and I think Australia has grown up considerably.”

Indeed, Anthony’s grounded upbringing gave him resilience when it came to his acting career, which started with theatre roles, including a Tony Award-winning stint on the Broadway show A View from the Bridge.

“I enjoyed the early difficulties. There was a freedom in it. I’ve enjoyed it less the more successful I became,” the star candidly revealed in a video interview with Hikari Takano.
Anthony LaPaglia with his second wife, Gia. (Credit: Getty)

Who is Anthony LaPaglia married to?

In the early 1990s, Anthony LaPaglia met Australian actress Gia Carides, with the pair later appearing together in the 1994 Australian romantic comedy Paperback Romance. They fell in love and married in September 1998, welcoming a daughter, Bridget, in January 2003.

Anthony had been married once before – to Cherie Michan – although not much is known about this chapter in the actor’s life.

Anthony spoke candidly about his second marriage to Gia in an interview with Female Magazine. 

“The thing about marriage is that they do require work on the part of both people. There’s a romantic notion that you fall in love and it all just kind of works magically. Now thats true to some degree but then there comes points in the relationship where it’s difficult – sometimes for external reasons, sometimes for internal reasons – and those are the times where you’re put to the test and you have to make the decision that you want to work on it and bridge the gap, whatever that is, and whenever that happens,” he said.

The star also touched on how fatherhood had changed him.

“Having a child is an entirely different experience. I mean, I always say this as a gag, but it’s kind of true that, when I walk in the door, my daughter is the only person in the world who is genuinely thrilled to see me,” the star said.

“Gia’s happy to see me, but not the genuine, unbridled kind of enthusiasm that I’m home. We’ve talked about the fact that despite the fact that we’ve been together 14 years, we still love each other tremendously, but it doesn’t even come close – and we don’t even say it in a disparaging way – to what we individually feel for our daughter. It touches a whole other part of your heart that you didn’t even know you had.”

Gia and Anthony would later split, with Anthony filing for divorce in April 2015, citing irreconcilable differences.
Anthony LaPaglia with his daughter Bridget, left, and third wife Alexandra, right, in 2017. (Credit: Getty)

Who is Anthony LaPaglia married to now?

Shortly after his separation from Gia, Anthony began a relationship with a much younger woman, Alexandra Henkel, now 35.

In a 2016 interview with the Herald Sun, Anthony made it clear he didn’t care what others thought of the union.

“My attitude is that if I don’t know someone — and it’s no disrespect to anyone out there — then I don’t care what their opinion is because they’re not me, they’re not in my life and they can have all the opinions they like — they don’t know what went on,” he told the publication.

“Outsiders are relatively unimportant to me, as long as the people involved know what went on.”

“People say ‘it’s failed’,” the actor said of his marriage. “My attitude is that it didn’t. Twenty years is a long time for any relationship, and so many positive and great things came out of it — my daughter being one of them…

“It’s an emotionally tough thing to go through, but it happens, and it’s about adjusting to the fact that people change, life changes.”

Anthony and Alexandra married in April 2018 in Haiku Mill on Maui’s north shore.

The blushing bride wrote on Instagram: “28.4.2018. The day I married the love of my life.” The pair celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary in 2023 and remain together to this day.
Anthony married Alexandra Henkel in 2018. (Credit: Instagram)
Memorably, however, Jonathan LaPaglia made headlines when he joked, prior to the wedding, on Hit105 that he wasn’t aware his brother was even engaged, adding that he had not seen his brother “in a while”.

“S**t is he getting married? Really?” he said at the time. “I should pay a little more attention to social media.”

When the host mentioned the couple’s 30-year age gap, Jonathan feigned surprise, saying, “Shut the front door? She’s 30 years younger? Bloody hell. I haven’t seen him in a while; he must be doing something right.

“Am I going to be a groomsman at his wedding? I didn’t even know he was getting married,” Jonathan added.

Who is Jonathan LaPaglia’s other brother?

Jonathan and Anthony’s older brother Michael, prefers to live a life out of the spotlight. He is understood to work as a car wholesaler in Los Angeles.