Dennis Quaid’s 10 greatest movies, according to Dennis Quaid
As well as being partly responsible for giving the world Jack Quaid, Dennis Quaid has done plenty of great stuff in his own right. The former Mr. Meg Ryan has featured in plenty of blockbuster hits across his lengthy career, as well as a number of critical darlings, too.
Quaid has revealed some of his favourite films in the past, but, crucially, none of them had him in them. First for Women decided to redress this imbalance by asking the star for the ten movies he was a part of that he likes the best. This must have been a tough task since he’s been in the industry for over half a century. However, he managed to pull it off, and he began with perhaps his most famous work – The Right Stuff.
“It was like being a boy,” Quaid explained (via Yahoo! Life). “It was a boyhood dream to be an astronaut.” The Right Stuff follows a group of aspiring spacemen called ‘The Mercury Seven’, as they train to be the first Americans in space. Quaid plays Gordon Cooper, the first American to spend over 24 hours in space. “I got my pilot’s license after that,” he recalled. “It was just a blast making it!”
The Right Stuff is the second-oldest film on Quaid’s list, behind only 1979’s Breaking Away. The film follows a group of Indiana teenagers who have recently left high school and entered the real world. There are two other movies from this period that made the grade: The Big Easy, a 1986 crime drama set in New Orleans, and Innerspace, a 1987 sci-fi comedy based on the classic story, Fantastic Voyage. This is the first time Quaid and his future wife Ryan worked together on a movie.
The other two movies with a claim to being the most famous on the list are The Day After Tomorrow, Roland Emmerich’s 2004 eco-disaster romp, and the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Quaid plays one half of a divorced couple whose twin daughters (Lindsay Lohan in her breakout dual role) conspire to get back together. Quaid described the family comedy as “a fantastic story that just won’t go away.” Another choice concerning a parent-child relationship is 2000’s Frequency, a story about a son (Jim Caviezel) who travels back in time to prevent his father (Quaid) from dying in a fire.
Quaid also seemingly has a penchant for real-life stories. In 2002’s The Rookie, he plays Jim Morris, a man who made his Major League Baseball debut at the relatively advanced age of 35. “I enjoy playing a real-life person,” he said of the film, which he also called a “beautiful story”. The biopics continue with 2018’s I Can Only Imagine, the story of an abusive father who, after finding faith, attempts to reconcile with his son.
This brings us to our final stop, another biopic. Sadly, this one didn’t turn out so well. Quaid used one of his spots to promote Reagan, a then-upcoming movie in which he plays the infamous US President, Ronald Reagan. Despite receiving musical support from Bob Dylan, the movie flopped in every sense of the word. It was nominated several times at the Golden Raspberry awards, with Quaid picking up a ‘Worst Actor’ nod. Oh dear.
Dennis Quaid’s favourite Dennis Quaid movies:
- The Right Stuff (Philp Kaufman, 1983)
- The Rookie (John Lee Hancock, 2002)
- Reagan (Sean McNamara, 2024)
- The Parent Trap (Nancy Meyers, 1998)
- Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979)
- I Can Only Imagine (Erwin Brothers, 2018)
- Frequency (Gregory Hoblit, 2000)
- Innerspace (Joe Dante, 1987)
- The Big Easy (Jim McBride, 1986)
- The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004)
