Late Bloomer
USA TODAY
Powered by
‘Late bloomer’ Quaid is on a roll
By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY
After four decades in Hollywood, Dennis Quaid is having a career year.
In Good Company: Quaid is getting good marks for his performance in a film with Scarlett Johansson.
Universal Studios
His summer disaster film The Day After Tomorrow pulled in $186.7 million in the USA and $542.5 million worldwide — the biggest box office performance of his 38-year movie career. And he’s getting accolades for playing a good guy who is replaced at work by a much younger man in the film In Good Company, which opens Dec. 29 in New York and Los Angeles.
He also stars in the action thriller remake Flight of the Phoenix, which opened this past weekend with a disappointing $5.2 million, and April’s flop The Alamo.
Still, Quaid says, “it’s been a great year.”
The Texas-born actor’s career was rejuvenated in 2002 with two key roles: an aging pitcher in The Rookie and a suburban husband coming to terms with his homosexuality in Far From Heaven.
“Those two films are what sparked everything,” Quaid says. “And having a hit movie like Day After Tomorrow, it’s surprising the injection it can have on your career. What’s going on right now is supposed to happen in your 30s. I guess I’m just a late bloomer.”
Quaid turned 50 in April, two decades after his career trajectory was ignited by his flamboyant portrayal of rocket jockey Gordon Cooper in 1983′s The Right Stuff. His seduction scenes with Ellen Barkin in 1987′s The Big Easy are considered among the sexiest in film history.
“I was the hot thing for about 15 minutes, but you don’t appreciate it as much when you’re young. Innerspace was supposed to be my big box office hit,” Quaid says of the 1987 sci-fi comedy that co-starred Meg Ryan and grossed just $26 million. “You just never know how things are going to turn out.”
Quaid acted steadily for the next 15 years but was largely overshadowed by the success of his wife, Ryan, whom he married in 1991. The pair split in 2001 in the wake of Ryan’s brief but widely publicized affair with Russell Crowe.
His great 2004 is partly a result of his marriage July 4 to Texas real estate agent Kimberly Buffington.
“My personal life has never been better,” he says. “Times are good. One of the great things about getting older is the usual baggage just falls away. You realize that things don’t last, that you need to enjoy things while they’re happening — there are no guarantees.”
Quaid’s 2004 film four-pack demonstrates his range, from buff action star in Phoenix to anguished parent and executive facing a midlife personal and professional crisis in Company.
Phoenix taps into several of his passions. “It’s about flight, it’s about hope, it’s about reinventing yourself,” says Quaid, a licensed pilot. “And doing Alamo was a passion project for me because I’m from Texas.”
Phoenix director John Moore says Quaid was his first choice to play grizzled cargo plane pilot Frank Towns, a role Jimmy Stewart played in the 1965 original.
Quaid “brought a great reluctant hero approach to the role,” Moore says. “He sauntered with a John Wayne swagger that’s genuine and old-fashioned at the same time. He’s no pushover, but he doesn’t complain. He pretends to be a lot rougher than he is, but he really is a sweetheart. He’s the kind of guy you want to go have a beer with.”
Quaid is mulling several movie roles, but a big chunk of 2005 will be tied up preparing, directing and starring in Shame on You, a $10 million movie about the life of controversial 1940s country music star Spade Cooley, who was imprisoned for the 1961 torture and murder of his wife.
Quaid heard about Cooley in the early 1990s.
“I don’t have a grand strategy to my career,” he says. “I really look for good stories. And this is a very good story that nobody knows about.”
