Dennis Quaid, The Rookie Interview by Paul Fischer

It's been quite the year for 48-year old actor Dennis Quaid, following the break-up of his marriage to Meg Ryan. Quaid, who was promoting his family-friendly baseball drama The Rookie, remains circumspect about his new-found love of life, and for Quaid, it's now all about the acting, not the stardom. "Well, I think anybody who carries themselves around like that is fooling themselves anyway because it's just a big delusion", Quaid explains. "Because you know, Hollywood is just one big high school and nothing has really changed.

You know it's who's the most popular this year and so what's the big difference?

A hundred years from now, ask anybody who was the biggest box office star of 1933? "Quaid has seen his own star rise and fall over the years, following his breakthrough role in that other classic sports-themed drama Breaking Away, back in 1975. His views on celebrity have changed since then, he admits. "When [fame] first happened to me back in my 20's I didn't know how to handle it very well having come from a lower middle class family in Texas. I couldn't understand why anybody would be interested in me and so I tended to shrink away from that.

Now I've become used to it and I sort of use it as a way to connect with people.

You know, people don't have to tell you anything; I'm a more people-person now."

Quaid is quietly relaxed these days, and yearns to spend more time with his 120-year old son "who has become my priority." Perhaps that accounts for the timeliness of Quaid' s latest film, The Rookie, as a high school coach who makes it to the major leagues. The Rookie is based on the true story of Jim Morris, who, at 35, signed with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. After a promising career in the minors, his career was over by 1989. While coaching high school ball, he promised his students that if his team made the playoffs, he would make a run at the pros. The film version, based on Morris's own book, co-stars Aussie award-winner Rachel Griffiths as his supportive wife.

For Quaid, starring in this gentle baseball pic, was a fantasy come true. After all, the actor says smilingly, "I haven't played [baseball] since I was in Little League."

Preparing to do a baseball movie when one is in one's forties was far from easy, the actor laughingly recalls. "To get the pitching motion right is really extremely difficult." Much harder than being a quarterback as he was in Any Given Sunday "because you've got to know what's going on around you and you've got helmets and pads and stuff like that.

Pitching starts from a dead stop and I didn't want to embarrass myself and throw like an actress," he adds laughingly. Yet at this point in the actor's career, making a film as pure as this was important to the star. "I think when you see the movie, the story just takes you; it's very emotional and about much more than baseball.

It's about second chances in life and John Hancock [director] really elevated a really good script." How did you know you could take faith in a first-time director like Hancock?
He had a really strong vision of what he wanted to do. I was hooked into that [vision], and that was enough for me. This criteria I have: It’s the script, the story and who’s directing it. And after that, it’s about what other actors are doing it.  You better be enthusiastic if you’re going to put that much time into it. Hancock was also from Texas, he understood the story..

Like many of Hollywood baseball films, The Rookie mythologizes this sport and Quaid agrees, that "there's a spirituality in baseball which hits the spirit that's captured in baseball more than football and you can see the players.

They're out there and they have the names on their back and hats and they seem so human."

Playing a real-life character that inspired others, Quaid recalls at least being in college and being inspired by his drama teacher. "I was 18 and I didn't really know which way I wanted to go in my life. So here I was in the drama department and from the first week I knew that what I wanted to do with my life and he instilled that in me", he recalls. "It was just the way that he taught it.

I had done drama in high school, but he just illuminated it for me. It was a craft and it sounded really like something that had nothing to do with being a story or Hollywood or anything.

It's a craft." Quaid, who spends much of the film acting alongside 10-year old scene-stealer Angus T. Jones, and Quaid responded to the paternalistic aspects of his role. "My 9-year old son and I are the best of friends, so working with Angus reminded me a whole lot of my own son, and we all hung out a lot."

You’re a natural physically athletic-looking guy yourself. What do you do to stay in shape?
I run, I do yoga and play golf.

Do you have your own personal yoga trainer or do you do it yourself?
I’ve been doing for so long I know what to do. But I need a little bit more Advil than I used to need.

Working in rural Texas on this film, Quaid let loose by performing at times with his band, the other big love of his life. As passionate as he is about acting, Quaid loves his music, admitting that his musical performances "takes the place of theater for me. It's really fun and I've been doing it since I was 12." Quaid adds that he "just loves to play music.

I always have and I just felt the need to play.

And you know the natural progression of that is sort of playing in front of a live audience and you've got a group of musicians.

That you play with and so it's always been a part of my life." But he doesn't anticipate choosing his music over his acting. "I have a really good day job in my acting and I don't want a record deal," he admits. ".

I had another band back in the 80s and we were going for a record deal which we actually got and I think my ego was really too wrapped up in it at the time.

It became this thing where I wasn't having fun doing it to tell you the truth while this time around it's a lot more fun."

Yet acting is his passion, and Quaid remains in love with the movies. "I think I'd like to be a part of some sort of classic movie that people are still seeing a hundred years from now; I'd like to be a part of something like that." If he hadn't made it as a movie star, Quaid says that he'd have either stayed in acting "doing regional theater" or had been a veterinarian." As The Rookie explores a man's quest for fulfilling his own dreams, it begs the question: Are all of Quaid' s own dreams fulfilled? "Yep, I realized quite a bit of mine, but your dreams keep changing as you get older.

It used to be all about me, me, me, me, me but now it's about my son and I really want to help him realize his." As for the kinds of dreams he has for his son, Quaid gently concludes that he "should really do something that he really wants to do in life and to find something that he loves doing and be able to do that for a living." Like father like son. And for the Future??

Just taking my son to school and then hitting the golf course. I’m perfectly happy with my life now and I take my time on between projects. I’m looking for something right now in the meantime. We’ll see how it goes.

Filmography

Untitled Richard Petty Biopic (2003)

Release Date: TBA 2003
Synopsis: In this film tracing the story of NASCAR legend Richard Petty, Dennis Quaid will play Lee, the racer's conflicted father, who was once a promising driver himself, until an injury through his career off track. The younger Petty struggles to live up to the elder's expectations, but goes on to amass more than 200 career victories.
Genre: Action, Sports

Far From Heaven (2002)

Release Date: TBA 2002
Synopsis: The second teaming of two-time Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore with writer/director Todd Haynes and producer Christine Vachon, following the 1995 drama "Safe." The new film is set in a suburban American community in the 1950s, where the ideally perfect glittering surfaces often hide a repressed world of great proportions. The story - which crosses both sexual and racial lines - revolves around a privileged suburban family whose lives are filled with daily family etiquette, social events at the club, and an overall desire to keep up with the Joneses. The family is turned upside down when both husband and wife are faced with choices that not only create a gossip mill for the entire community but also change their entire lives forever.
Starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert
Directed by Todd Haynes
Producer: Christine Vachon
Written by Todd Haynes
Genre: Drama

Waking Up in Reno (2002)

Release Date Fall 2002
Synopsis: Two redneck couples from Arkansas hit the road to see a monster truck show in Reno, Nev. Along the way, they discover infidelity and dysfunction among them.
Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Charlize Theron, Patrick Swayze, Natasha Richardson, Dennis Quaid
Directed by Jordan Brady
Written by Brent Briscoe, Mark Fauser
Studio Miramax
Genre Comedy, Romance
MPAA Rating R - for language and some sexual content
Filming Location(s) Los Angeles; Reno, Nev.; Texas
Web Sites Official Site