For his starring role as Jack Malone on the American television crime drama series Without a Trace (2002–09), he received a Golden Globe Award in 2004.

He starred alongside Danny Aiello and Lainie Kazan in 29th Street, a fact-based comedy/bio-pic, as the first New York State Lottery winner, Frank Pesce Jr.

He played a hit man in Bulletproof Heart (1994) with Mimi Rogers and starred alongside future wife Gia Carides in the romantic comedy Paperback Romance (1994).

During 1997–98, LaPaglia appeared in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge with the Roundabout Theatre Company and later received a Tony Award for his portrayal of the protagonist, Eddie Carbone.

In 2002, LaPaglia co-starred as a fire captain opposite Sigourney Weaver in The Guys, a film about New York firemen who died in the World Trade Center.

[2][8] LaPaglia was originally cast in Quentin Tarantino's new film Django Unchained,[9] but eventually left the project, calling the production "out of control.

[13] In 2014, LaPaglia appeared in a CBS terrorism drama pilot titled Red Zone starring as a retired CIA operative and current high school football coach who returns to active duty after a terrorist attack in Washington, D.C.[14] It was renamed Field of Play but never aired.

The 2015 film stars Ryan Corr and Craig Stott, with supporting performances from LaPaglia, Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush.

In that year LaPaglia returned to his home city, Adelaide, to star in A Month of Sundays as Frank, a miserable real estate agent who finds solace and redemption in a chance friendship with an elderly woman (played by Julia Blake) who reminds him of his mother.

The following year he starred in the four-part miniseries Sunshine, an Australian crime drama series screened on SBS,[18] set in the western Melbourne suburb of the same name, playing the role of mentor to a promising young Sudanese-Australian soccer player.

The four-part miniseries is an Essential Media production, directed by Daina Reid and written by Matt Cameron and Elise McCredie.

In 2017, LaPaglia played Vito Rizzuto in the Simon Barry Canadian TV series Bad Blood, which aired on Citytv, in French on ICI Radio-Canada.

[21] In 2023 LaPaglia appeared in the ABC TV series The Black Hand, which explores the activities of the Italian 'Ndrangheta in the cane fields of Queensland, Australia, in the 1920s and 1930s.

[22] The same year, he appeared in his Australian stage debut as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman at Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne, directed by Neil Armfield.

He was the narrator and executive producer of The Away Game, a critically acclaimed television documentary exploring the experiences of Australian men's soccer players in Europe.

The Academy was founded and is operated by James Fraser, who represented the Australian national team leading up to the 1974 FIFA World Cup.