Actor Randy Quaid has lost his bid for permanent residency status in Canada, where he’s been since 2010, hiding from the “Hollywood Star-Wackers” who are out to get him.
He’s been nominated for an Oscar and he’s been nominated for an Emmy, but now Randy Quaid is known as an international fugitive since skipping town to avoid felony and misdemeanor charges in California.
With his wife, Evi (pronounced “evvy”).
Evi and Quaid have been accused of running up big hotel bills and not paying them, and of trashing property they were squatting in. That’s squatting as in “living there without permission,” not squatting as in “it’s a crime in California to almost sit.”
You can read their side of the story and more of the sordid details in this Vanity Fair article from 2011. The profile has a definite cherchez la femme angle when it comes to trying to explain the Quaids’ behavior in the last few years.
Behavior that involves Randy Quaid getting kicked out of stage production in Texas for being too rude to his fellow actors. Behavior that got them hauled into court in California, where they were released on bail, which they promptly forfeited by leaving the country and going to Vancouver, B.C.
That was Round 1. With warrants out for their arrest, the Quaids held a press conference in Canada, beginning Round 2, in which the “Hollywood Star-Wackers” are revealed to be the source of all their troubles:
So the Quaids live in Canada, afraid they’ll be offed by the same cabal of Hollywood agents, producers and bankers who got to David Carradine, Heath Ledger, Chris Penn, Lindsay Lohan and (possibly) Michael Jackson.
Motive? All the dough Randy made from National Lampoon’s Vacation, starring Chevy Chase (who personally called on Randy to be in the movie).
Randy Quaid applied for refugee status in Canada. Meanwhile, Evi Quaid was granted Canadian citizenship because her father is Canadian. That allowed Evi to “sponsor” an immigrant like her husband Randy, so that he could apply for permanent residency.
Alas, the reach of the Hollywood Star-Wackers is long indeed, stretching even to Quebec to snuff Randy’s chances of asylum.
Randy Quaid says it’s not over yet, that he’ll appeal the decision. In other words, Round 4 coming up!
To read more about Quaid’s once-impressive career, see the Who2 biography of Randy Quaid, who is not his brother Dennis Quaid, who is no longer married to Meg Ryan, who broke up the family and was always jealous of Evi (so says Evi).
(Photo: Randy and Evi Quaid in Los Angeles in 2005, at a showing of Cinderella Man, credit WENN and Nikki Nelson.)