Dennis Quaid Biography

Lean and a bit craggy with an aw-shucks grin, actor Dennis Quaid has often played rascals with good hearts and soft heads. His most prominent early role was that of cocky astronaut Gordon Cooper in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. Ever-youthful and athletic, Dennis Quaid turned into a sturdy leading man and dependable ensemble actor. He has appeared as a stranded astronaut in Enemy Mine (1985); as Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire! (1989, with Winona Ryder); as nihilistic ol’ Doc Holliday in the western feature Wyatt Earp (1994, starring Kevin Costner); as Lindsay Lohan‘s befuddled dad in The Parent Trap (1998); as Jake Gyllenhaal‘s overprotective dad in The Day After Tomorrow (2004); as Jim Caviezel‘s time-warped dad in Frequency (2000); as a shady lawyer in Traffic (2000, directed by Stephen Soderbergh); as plucky comeback pitcher Jim Morris in the 2002 biopic The Rookie; as Julianne Moore‘s gay husband in Far From Heaven (2002); as Sam Houston in The Alamo (2004); as an embittered literature professor in Smart People (2008, with Ellen Page); and as the sinewy General Hawk in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009, with Sienna Miller). Dennis Quaid tried his hand at series television in 2012, starring with Carrie-Anne Moss and Michael Chiklis in Vegas.