Dennis Quaid
Born: April 1954
Where: Houston, Texas, USA
A reliable supporting actor with the odd lead role in Hollywood for thirty years, it was as the closet gay husband in Todd Hayne's Far From Heaven that critics took notice.
However, since the mid-1970s he had been appearing in movies like Breaking Away, The Right Stuff, D.O.A, Postcards from the Edge and The Big Easy.
Of Irish and Cajun ancestry, Quaid is the son of an electrician and an estate agent and was raised as a baptist.
He attended Pershing Middle School in Houston and later studied drama at Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas.
He began acting in high school and enrolled in a college drama programme only to drop out aged 20 to follow his elder brother Randy to Hollywood.
After small parts in Crazy Mama and The Seniors, it was his turn as the frustrated Midwestern teenager in Breaking Away that the attention of Hollywood.
He teamed with his brother Randy to play the outlaw Miller brothers in Walter Hill's Western The Long Riders, and played astronaut Gordon Cooper in The Right Stuff.
Soon he was landing the lead roles which received a boost with his excellent turn as a Louisiana detective in The Big Easy, directed by Jim McBride.
He met his former wife, Meg Ryan, in 1987, while co-starring with her in Innerspace and they were re-teamed a year later in D.O.A. They married in 1991 but nine years later were divorced, and they have one son together.
Off-screen, the actor was battling an addiction to cocaine and following his turn in, of all movies, Postcards From the Edge, he underwent treatment for drug abuse.
Returning to work, Quaid starred in three features released in 1993, the bizarre and confusing Wilder Napalm, the precious Thin Man wannabe Undercover Blues and the murky but well-acted Flesh And Bone.
The same year he literally transformed himself, dropping some 40 pounds to play the tubercular Doc Holliday in Lawrence Kasdan's epic Wyatt Earp.
He was back to speed as the charming ne'er-do-well husband of Julia Roberts in Something to Talk About and brought a level of surprising believability to his turn as a medieval knight in Dragonheart.
Quaid turned in a fine performance as an aging quarterback in the Oliver Stone-directed Any Given Sunday, which he followed up with Frequency and then was cast as a slippery lawyer advising the wife of a drug lord in Traffic.
The success of The Rookie paved the way to his return to box office and critical success, which he achieved opposite Julianne Moore in the intense drama Far From Heaven.
In 2003, he starred in the suspense thriller Cold Creek Manor and subsequently John Lee Hancock's cinematic retelling of The Alamo.
The following year he joined an all-star cast for the big budget remake of Flight Of The Phoenix and appeared in the rom-com In Good Company.
Director Roland Emmerich cast him as a climatologist and Jake Gyllenhaal his son in the disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow.
Staying in romantic vein, he appeared in the sluggish family drama Yours, Mine and Ours and then appeared opposite Hugh Grant in the musical drama American Dreamz.
In 2008, he played a secret service agent protecting the president in the thriller Vantage Point and a widowed professor in the romantic drama Smart People.
