Dennis Quaid

Biography:

Dennis William Quaid was born on April 9, 1954, in Houston, Texas, and grew up in the suburban city of Bellaire. He developed an early passion for performance, studying drama, dance, and even Mandarin Chinese in high school. He later dropped out of the University of Houston in 1974 and headed to Los Angeles to pursue acting, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Randy Quaid.  

Quaid emerged as a movie star in the 1980s after his breakthrough in Breaking Away (1979), going on to star in acclaimed films like The Right Stuff (1983), in which he played astronaut Gordon Cooper, and Great Balls of Fire! (1989), where he portrayed rock legend Jerry Lee Lewis.  

He appeared in praised performances and box office hits in the 1990’s including Wyatt Earp (1994), The Parent Trap (1998), and Dragonheart (1996) and then in the 2000’s continued with Frequency (2000), Traffic (2000), The Rookie (2002), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Far from Heaven (2002). For Far from Heaven, he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor and received a Golden Globe nomination.