Randy Quaid

Born: 1st October 1950
Where: Houston, Texas

Fledgling director Peter Bogdanovich discovered the actor at drama college and cast him in his 1968 big screen debut Targets.

A versatile character actor (and older brother of actor Dennis), Quaid reached the peak of his career when he won an Oscar for the kleptomaniac sailor opposite Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail.

His range is evident both in starring roles, like his young, flamboyant President Lyndon Johnson in LBJ: The Early Years, (a 1987 TV-movie that won him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor) and in smaller roles like his crass car racing promoter in Days of Thunder.

After Targets, Quaid went on to appear in other early Bogdanovich productions, including What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon.

He picked up an Emmy nomination in 1984 for his supporting work in a TV production of A Streetcar Named Desire, playing Mitch, Stanley's poker partner.

He did a season as part of the Saturday Night Live ensemble in 1985 bringing a more polished performance to the types of roles that earlier might have gone to John Belushi.

Subsequent big screen highlights included Days of Thunder, Texasville, The Paper and as a world-saving crop duster in the blockbuster Independence Day in 1996.

However, regular decent roles continued to elude him until he joined the all-star cast on the live action animation The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle in 2000.

Recent work includes the weak Not Another Teen Movie and Pluto Nash as well as the voice of cattle rustler Alameda Slim in Disney's Home on the Range.