Although the actor has earned positive notices in the past several years, most of the films were hardly blockbusters, a fact Kaufman thinks Quaid might have "taken the rap for, which is unfair." Adds Quaid, "You know, a movie makes 100 million bucks at the box office, you get paid for it. It's that simple."
But Quaid's star-talent-at-a-discount-price (he commands $4 million a picture, as opposed to Harrison Ford's $20 million) worked in his favor when Frequency's director, Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear), was looking for a leading man. Toby Emmerich's screenplay originally called for the father to be younger than the son (time warp, remember?), but after considering some of Hollywood's hottest young actors, Hoblit feared that they would lack the requisite "emotional life." Hoblit also considered some other older big-name actors, but "[they] were so pricey that it spun the movie into a whole different place." Of Quaid, Hoblit says, "I thought he was a vastly underrated actor. Look at Wyatt Earp. Look at The Big Easy."
When the two men finally hooked up for lunch in Santa Monica--Quaid was filming Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday at the time--Hoblit asked him to join the project. "We met only briefly," Hoblit recalls. "But the thing about Dennis is what you see is what you get. I think he's come to terms with his demons, and he's gotten control of his life."
That would seem to be an understatement. While Quaid occasionally still plays the daredevil--he's earned his pilot's license and flies from L.A. to his ranch in Montana--the actor's biggest buzzes come from time with his family and long- distance runs. "He's fun, but does he sit there and shimmer?" says one friend. "Well, no." Maybe not in real life, but he certainly has that gleam back on screen. "I think, weirdly, he has more to offer than he did 10 years ago," says Willard Carroll, who directed Quaid in the 1998 ensemble dramedy Playing by Heart. "He's got that lived-in look, that handsomeness that only comes with age and experience...and good genes."
Quaid, who's off to San Diego for a supporting role in Steven Soderbergh's drug thriller Traffic, isn't sure how he's next going to flaunt that handsomeness: Instead, he hopes to go behind the camera to direct a drama he has written. For the moment, he says he's content to head home to L.A. and play househusband, caring for his 8-year-old son, Jack, while mom Ryan films Proof of Life with Russell Crowe in Ecuador. "I don't know what's going to happen [next], I really don't," Quaid says. If only he had a ham radio.
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