Lauria is best known for his portrayal of Jack Arnold, the stern, but loving, money-conscious father on the TV series The Wonder Years, which ran from 1988 to 1993.

He also played Commanding Officer, USA in 1996's Independence Day and NASA Administrator James Webb in the 1998 TV miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.

Lauria appeared on stage in New York in the summer of 2006 in an off-Broadway production of A Stone Carver by William Mastrosimone with Jim Iorio and Elizabeth Rossa.

In late 2009, Lauria returned to the off-Broadway stage, appearing as Jimmy Hoffa in Brian Lee Franklin's Good Bobby, a fictionalized account of Robert F. Kennedy's rise.

In 2012, Lauria played the part of Jean Shepherd in the Broadway production of A Christmas Story: The Musical, a role which he reprised off-Broadway at Madison Square Garden in 2013.

In 2021, Lauria starred as a right-wing conspiracy theorist who marries a Russian mail-order bride in Wes Hurley's autobiographical dramedy Potato Dreams of America.