Dennis Quaid has seen the highs and lows of the movie business.
Now that he’s in the twilight of his career, he’s beginning to reflect.
And Dennis Quaid revealed something about his career that fans never expected.
Veteran Actor Dennis Quaid got his first break in Hollywood when he appeared in 1979s Breaking Away, a comedy centered on the real-life Little 500 bicycle race at Indiana University.
He went on to star in notable movies like The Big Easy, Traffic, and The Rookie.
Quaid reflects on his career
Quaid said in an interview with Fox News that he’s happy with how his more than four-decade career has unfolded.
He said that he passed on roles in some major box office hits over his career, but he didn’t have any regrets about how things turned out.
“I really don’t regret any of them. Instead of Big, I did The Big Easy, which turned out to be kind of what jump-started my career, and you can’t get everything,” Quaid said. “That’s the way it goes.”
The Big Easy became one of the biggest hits of his career and earned him several awards for his portrayal of hard-boiled Detective Remy McSwain.
Quaid said he “waits for things to come” to him for his next project.
Big name hits that Quaid passed on
Quaid said that he had good reason for passing on some big-name films during his career.
“I guess at the time there are reasons for it,” Quaid said. “I passed on Big, passed on A League of Their Own. I had good reasons for that, Peggy Sue Got Married. There were a bunch of movies like that I passed on – The Dukes of Hazzard.”
In his next film, he plays former President Ronald Reagan in the biographical feature Reagan, which is due out later this year.
The challenging thing for him was trying to make his performance not come off as an impersonation of the 40th President.
“It was one of the most challenging roles that I’ve ever had to kind of get down and know the person,” Quaid said. “He was actually a great communicator, very private, kind of unknowable person.”
The film is based on the 2006 book The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.
“I learned a lot in this role and a lot about him,” Quaid explained. “He defeated the Soviets in the Cold War, going on for almost 50 years, without firing a shot. He led us out of times very similar to what we’re going through now and did it with principles rather than just the politics of the day.”
Quaid, who recently turned 70, said that he’s tried to play as many different parts as possible and learn something from them.
“It’s great being an actor,” Quaid stated. “You get to go and research [and] live all these lives that you would never get a chance to become acquainted with. You go through all these doors that say, ‘authorized personnel only’ and get all these experiences.”
