More than once critics have claimed Dennis Quaid's career was over. But with a new family, four new films in 2008, including the soon to be released, Smart People, the actor has never been higher.
Dennis Quaid is grumpy as hell. When he steps from his BMW 7 Series near the stables at Will Rogers State Historic Park, outside Los Angeles, where he has agreed to do a photo shoot, the absence of his famous grin makes it feel as if someone has closed the blinds on a sunny afternoon. Judging by one of his first announcements—“I hate this shit”— his pearly whites won’t be lighting up anybody’s life on this California winter’s day.The 53-year-old’s testiness is perplexing considering his recent late career revival—one more in a series of impressive comebacks. Quaid’s been in the business for more than 30 years, and for every success it seems like he’s been counted out of the game at least twice. He was a rising star after Breaking Away and The Right Stuff and then…not much. His first career resurrection began in the late eighties with the release of The Big Easy, followed by D.O.A., Great Balls of Fire!, and Postcards from the Edge. Then came the cocaine crash and burn, rehab, and two years of involuntary retirement. His first couple of films on the way back were nearly straight to video, but when he appeared in Flesh and Bone and Wyatt Earp, it seemed Quaid was back in the saddle of success. Still, the nineties were tough, with the ascendancy of his wife, Meg Ryan, followed by the couple’s all-too-public divorce.
Now, at a time when most aging A-list actors are lucky to get a guest-lecturer’s gig at San Diego Mesa College, Quaid has racked up an impressive string of big parts in the last six years in solid films such as The Rookie, The Alamo, The Day After Tomorrow,and Flight of the Phoenix. He’s fast becoming the American Jude Law, as far as productivity goes: In 2008 alone, he'll star in four films—The Horsemen, Vantage Point, the soon to be released, Smart People, and The Express in the fall. Not bad for, what, his fifth act?
Still, on the set of the shoot in Los Angeles, Quaid is a bit prickly. He lightens up somewhat when his friend Brad shows up with the horses from the stables near Quaid’s house a few blocks away. Brad’s horse, a young, sleek chestnut mare, is right out of central casting, while Quaid’s own little gelding looks like he trotted through a car wash and stood too long under the blower.
“Yeah, he’s all furred up,” Quaid says. “I brought him down from my place in Montana, and he furred up for the winter. Except this winter has been 60 degrees in Pacific Palisades.”
With all the acting jobs of late, Quaid’s been on an enforced absence from his ranch in Montana’s Paradise Valley, possibly another explanation for the grumpiness. Though he jokes that “Montana is nine months of winter and three months of guests,” it’s clear that the ranch is one of the closest things to Quaid’s heart.
“I had done Breaking Away, and I was driving back from Indiana. I went through Montana and as soon as I came out the north side of Yellowstone National Park into that valley, I decided I was going to live there,” he recalls of his 1978 trip. “I was 24. Back then you could buy acreage on the Yellowstone River for, like, $500 an acre. If you could get it now, it would be like $40,000. I bought a place, and then I sold it because I wanted a bigger one. When [actor] Warren Oates, who was a good friend of mine, died, his widow wanted to sell his place, so I bought it.”
Over the years, Quaid has added more land to Oates’s original holdings, including the late director Sam Peckinpah’s ranch, three miles up the creek. He now has roughly 500 acres, on which sits a magnificent 7,800-square-foot home whose construction he personally supervised until its completion in 2000. The home and five other houses on the property provide lodging for up to 20, and the land is almost entirely surrounded by national forest—which means, Quaid says, “I can walk out my door and walk about 100 miles without crossing a road.” It’s classic Quaid. Though Hollywood talk makes him tetchy—he often shrugs off his “work,” saying it’s not like having to tar roofs for a living—he perks up when conversation turns to the thing he loves: namely, getting outside. It’s no coincidence that almost every room in his Montana home has at least one door leading outdoors. You get the impression that it doesn’t matter whether it’s fishing, riding, flying (he’s also a licensed pilot), running, or go-cart racing with his son Jack, 15: Quaid is happier when he’s outside.
On the ranch, Quaid likes to take a long run in the mornings or get up before dawn to stalk native cutthroat trout along his three miles of private creek. “I’ve caught some cutthroats that were from my finger to my elbow in that creek,” he says. “The farther up you go the purer it is…the cutthroats up there actually growl at you when you catch them.” In the late afternoons, when it starts to cool off, he’ll go to the stables and pick out one of his 11 horses for a long ride. This summer, he and Jack plan to do some horseback camping “either from our house or go into Yellowstone and go from there. You ride for a day and wind up in a fish camp,” Quaid says.
Even when he’s not in Montana, the actor makes exercise a priority. In L.A., he devotes part of each day to running, lifting weights, or practicing yoga. And, of course, there’s golf. “My routine is, I usually get up in the morning, fix Jack breakfast and take him to school, and then go to the golf course but only once a day,” he says with a laugh. Quaid jokes that he was “a scratch golfer two years ago for about 30 minutes. Then I got a job and worked for about an entire year straight. In order to be good, you have to be there five days a week.”
Though Quaid has been noted throughout his career for his athleticism and physique, he says that’s not what motivates him. “I just like the way it makes me feel. And it’s really about raging against aging more than anything else. I used to box in my twenties, and there was a guy at the Hollywood Y, he was in his early fifties, and he said, ‘Look, if you take care of yourself in your twenties and thirties, your fifties will take care of themselves.’”
Quaid has two more reasons to look after himself these days too. In November, the actor and his wife, Kimberly, became new parents of twins, a boy and a girl. “I love the commotion of kids,” he says. “They keep you young.” Still, one wonders if he has really thought this through: He’ll be 63 when it’s time to play catch with his son and over 70 when it’s time to kick the *** of his daughter’s prom date.
“I quit smoking when the kids were born,” he says with pride. “I’ve gone over two months, and this is the one. I’ve quit a hundred times, but I’ve really quit this time because I want to be around for them.”
No smokes for two months? Ah, that’s why he’s grumpy.
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