Right turn

When Dennis Quaid finally accepted the role of Ronald Reagan in the first full-length feature film based on the life of the 40th president, he felt, he said, “a shiver of fear go through my spine.”

Playing someone “so identifiable to just about everybody in the world was … quite intimidating.”

Still, Quaid knew his fear, and the fact that the role felt way out of his comfort zone, was likely a sign that he needed to tackle it. But before he said yes to playing Reagan in Reagan, which premieres August 30, Quaid spent long hours digging deeply into the title character’s life.

“I really wanted to find a way into the man inside him—not my hero or what he represented,” Quaid told me. “I wanted to find the human being inside of him.”

I met with Quaid in June in a tucked-away, craftsman-style office in downtown Nashville: Framed Grand Ole Opry memorabilia on the walls, guitar case on the floor, Quaid’s miniature bulldog Peaches lounging at his feet. (She goes everywhere with him.) Now 70, Quaid seems somehow ageless: same steel-blue eyes, same Cheshire grin, now set in a face marked more deeply with experience than with years.

Quaid had just finished a high-energy radio interview in the same room, but he seemed to become more serious when talking about what went into the role of Reagan.

To prepare for the part, he tells me, he visited the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., where he studied old videos and movies. Quaid also visited Rancho del Cielo—“Heaven’s Ranch”—Ron and Nancy Reagan’s California retreat.

During Reagan’s presidency, which lasted from 1981 to 1989, someone dubbed the property the Western White House. Though the moniker stuck, it didn’t necessarily fit in terms of some grand presidential estate, as Quaid would learn.

After grinding up 5 miles of harrowing switchbacks on what Quaid calls “the worst road in California,” he found at the top an almost aggressively modest home: tiny rooms, a kitchen that was vintage even in the 1980s, and in the bedroom, two single mattresses zip-tied together to make a king-size bed. The home was only about 1,100 square feet in size, and it was evident to Quaid that any work done on it had been done by Reagan himself.

That’s when Quaid understood Reagan’s humility, he said. As the leader of the free world, Reagan might have undertaken some remodeling to create a home more befitting his position—or at least bedecked the lowly ranch house with the trappings of his office. But Reagan had done neither. And the Young America’s Foundation, which has managed the ranch since 1998, left the house and its contents just as they were when the Reagans lived in it—right down to the clothes in the closets.

“I could feel him there,” Quaid told me. “That’s what really made my decision to do the role.”

Quaid movies (clockwise from top left): The Right Stuff, Great Balls of Fire, The Parent Trap, Soul Surfer, The Rookie, I Can Only Imagine. The Right Stuff: ©Warner Bros/Maximum Film/Alamy; Great Balls of Fire ©Orion Pictures/AJ Pics/Alamy; The Parent Trap: ©Walt Disney/TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy; Soul Surfer: Moviestore Collection Ltd/Alamy; The Rookie: ©Walt Disney/TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy; I Can Only Imagine: ©Kevin Downes Productions/TCD/Prod.DB/Alamy

ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S most established actors, Quaid is known for leading-man roles in films like Orion Pictures’ Great Balls of Fire (1989) and Columbia Pictures’ The Big Easy (1986), as well as acclaimed supporting roles in 1986’s The Right Stuff and 1979’s Breaking Away (his break-out role.) His filmography is long and versatile—from a drug lord’s turncoat lawyer in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000) to a 35-year-old high school baseball coach who gets a second chance to pitch in the major leagues in 2002’s The Rookie from Walt Disney Pictures. Next, Quaid plays a serial killer who also happens to be a doting father in the Paramount+ series Happy Face.

For all his success, though, Quaid has had his share of career stalls and panned projects. He lost momentum in the industry in the early 1990s after he battled anorexia nervosa brought on from losing 40 pounds in preparation to play the tubercular Doc Holliday in the 1994 Warner Bros. western, Wyatt Earp. Around that time he was also battling cocaine addiction.

He’s said that 1998’s The Parent Trap changed the trajectory of his career following a dark season in his life he calls “Cocaine School.” (Quaid matriculated in rehab and graduated clean.) It’s only been in more recent years that he’s successfully turned to roles in faith-based film. Not an easy feat for a bankable star in an industry that has long viewed the genre as “Christian schlock”—fraught with heavy-handed messages, stock characters, and predictable scripts.

Quaid said it was when the Christian drama The Shack debuted in 2017 that he thought, “Maybe I should take a look at this.”

Hollywood, he said, “was dissing and dismissing the Christian filmmakers the Erwin Brothers, but I felt they really had their act together.” He accepted a starring role in their film I Can Only Imagine.

“I think Hollywood over time has kind of lost its way—lost touch with its audience. It really felt like something new,” he said, likening it to the way the French New Wave of the 1970s changed film.

“You know, it’s quite all right to do films about other religions, but it’s like somehow being a Christian is not allowed or dismissed, or it’s not going to sell or whatever,” Quaid said. “But there’s this real hunger that’s been around for decades to make films like that. People relate to them. … They touch the soul. It’s the Holy Spirit at work.”

The Reagans at their Santa Barbara ranch in 1980. Paul Harris/Getty Images

RAISED IN THE BAPTIST CHURCH as a teenager in Houston, Quaid admits he was turned off by “churchianity,” as he called it then. Even so, he always identified as a Christian. “I was a seeker, you know,” he said, his dog Peaches now fast asleep, as though she’s heard this story before.

Quaid read many religious texts during his spiritual journey, including the entire Bible five times. “Every time you read it as you get older, it means something different. … I’ve finally come to a place where [I] could read it for a thousand years and find something new.” He especially resonates with “the red words,” the words of Christ.

It was Cocaine School that really put him on the road to knowing Christ, he said: “That’s a big part of your spiritual journey. … You’re left with an empty hole and just yourself.”

Quaid recalls that journey in a very personal music album, Fallen: A Gospel Record of Sinners, his second album, and first solo effort, released by Gaither Music Group last year. “It’s the realization that no one but Christ can fill the hole inside.”

That understanding is foundational in his marriage to Laura, Quaid’s fourth wife, with whom he formed Bonniedale Productions (named after the actor’s mother).

“We have the greatest relationship,” Quaid said of Laura, who is 31. “I don’t know why I had to wait so long for that one to come around.”

That last line came off as a quip, but then Quaid turned serious again, noting that it was he, and not others, who needed to change. “I had a lot of work to do on me, and I had a lot to kind of work out between me and God over time, and so I came into this relationship, into this marriage, ready.”

“ ... Or readier,” he adds, smiling again and pausing. Peaches is now snoring.

Here’s something Quaid wasn’t quite ready for: finding parallels between himself and Ronald Reagan. Not in some grandiose, history-making way, but in undeniably intriguing ones. Reagan, the film, was shooting at the ranch, scenes in which Quaid re-created events in the very rooms where they happened. That’s when the parallels began to dawn on him.

Both men were strongly influenced by their Christian mothers. Each was at one point overshadowed by a film-star wife. Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman, was considered a “serious actress.” Wyman was nominated twice for an Academy Award for best actress for films she worked on during her marriage to Reagan, and four times in all, winning in 1949 for Johnny Belinda. Meanwhile, as an actor, Reagan seemed always to be reaching for a spot on Hollywood’s A-list but never quite getting there. Likewise, there were times during Quaid’s marriage to actress Meg Ryan when he felt left behind.

Quaid noted that Reagan never realized his acting dreams. “I think he wound up feeling like Mr. Mom in a sense and, well, I could relate to that.”

Politically, too, Reagan and Quaid were Hollywood insiders playing both sides of the aisle. Reagan spent much of his early years campaigning for Democrats before taking a long right turn toward conservatism. Quaid has historically been an ­independent, voting for both Democratic and Republican ­presidential candidates. Today, he’s pro-Trump, and he’s taken some grief for that. For example, after Quaid appeared for an interview on Piers Morgan’s program this May, former CNN contributor Roland Martin said the actor “sounds like a whack job defending that pathetic miscreant Donald Trump.” But Quaid is so universally liked in Hollywood that his pro-Trump stance hasn’t seemed to hurt him.

Maybe that’s because Quaid is not a Trumpist of the slash-and-burn variety. In fact, he and Reagan cast mate Dan Lauria, who plays former House Speaker and Democratic titan Tip O’Neill, teamed up in July to roam the floor at the Republican National Convention. Like their characters in the film, the actors are friends who occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum. In appearing together at the RNC, they hoped to exemplify a message of American unity and also promote their forthcoming film as nonpartisan.

In a scene from Reagan: William P. Clark (Mark Moses) and Reagan (Quaid) ride horses at Rancho del Cielo. Rob Batzdorff

REAGAN  FOLLOWS THE  40th PRESIDENT’S LIFE from childhood to his time in Hollywood and the White House. It also stars Penelope Ann Miller as Nancy Reagan and Mena Suvari as Reagan’s first wife, Wyman. Jon Voight plays fictional ex-KGB agent Viktor Petrovich, whose narration frames the story with perspective about Reagan’s upbringing and steadfast opposition to the machinations of the Soviet Union.

Directed by Sean McNamara, whom Quaid worked with on 2011’s Soul Surfer and 2023’s On a Wing and a Prayer, production began in the fall of 2020. As one of the first films to shoot amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the production withstood the earliest, strictest safety precautions. Cast and crew members tested daily for the virus and were not allowed to frequent public places.

Amid many stops and starts, it became a “trial of an experience,” as Quaid put it. When a crew member contracted the virus during the second week of shooting in Guthrie, Okla., production shut down for a month. Quaid himself also became ill.

Even amid the trials, director McNamara was impressed with the meticulous way Quaid transformed into Reagan, first with his voice and then through hair and costume.

“He’s a perfectionist,” McNamara said, noting Quaid’s tendency to go the extra mile. “Dennis learned Reagan’s entire 1987 ‘Tear Down This Wall’ speech, even though we only needed a few sentences.”

Miller said her chemistry with Quaid helps make the love story at the center of Reagan believable. “The fact that Ronnie and Nancy were so madly in love and so devoted and so smitten with each other, it was important that Dennis and I get along. And luckily, we did,” she said.

The two remain good friends. Miller said Quaid still calls her “Nancy Pants,” Reagan’s affectionate nickname for his wife.

In a scene from Reagan: Mikhail Gorbachev (Olek Krupa) talks with Reagan. Noah “Nanea” Hamilton

As a bio-drama, Reagan is definitely made for mainstream audiences. But it does include scenes that show how deeply his mother Nell’s faith, as well as his church upbringing, influenced Reagan.

One has a 12-year-old Dutch (as his father nicknamed him) questioning his mother about an Old Testament passage. The Scriptural message—and the message to young Reagan—was that anyone can be one of God’s people as long as they choose Him. Another scene reprises an actual event from 1970, when an ordinary prayer for Reagan led by Christian leaders (with friends Pat and Shirley Boone present) seemed, at least, to prophesy Reagan’s eventual presidency.

Quaid was aware of Reagan’s political rise even as a kid. He fondly remembers flying down the freeway with his dad in 1964 listening to Reagan’s first major speech on behalf of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. The address, which became known as “A Time for Choosing,” was pivotal in Reagan’s political life because it sparked a big increase in donations to the Republican Party and its candidates. Still, Quaid insists that Reagan the film isn’t just a love letter to his favorite president. Instead, he calls it a love story and a truthful portrayal of a great man who made missteps, too.

In Quaid’s view, for example, Reagan was “out of touch” when it came to the AIDS epidemic: “He didn’t handle everything right, but this is a guy who won the Cold War, and a lot of people born after 1985 don’t realize what a big deal that was.”

In a scene from Reagan: Reagan delivers a speech from the Oval Office. Noah “Nanea” Hamilton

Quaid emphasizes the care cast and crew poured into making the film as historically accurate as possible. “The only nonhistorical fact in the film was Peaches,” Quaid said with that Cheshire grin and a glance at his feet. In the film, his beloved bulldog stars as the Reagans’ dog, Rex. In real life, Rex was a Cavalier King Charles spaniel.

Perhaps fittingly, Peaches’ star turn will hit theaters on the eve of a presidential election. Initially, Quaid didn’t want the film released during an election year. But he now sees comparisons between politics and world events today and the period before and during Reagan’s presidency. So maybe a 2024 release is providential, Quaid said: “God knows better than me. I think it’s very similar to what was going on back then, but now I think the stakes are even bigger.”

For Quaid, making Reagan was nothing short of life-changing. He got to be “a fly on the wall for all those things I wanted to see about Reagan’s life,” Quaid said. “It was a very emotional experience. I think we go to the movies more than to see things. We go there to feel things, and I think this movie really does deliver.”

Quaid doesn’t want filmgoers to worry they’re in for a history lesson. But he does hope, passionately in fact, that those born after Reagan’s presidency will be able to see what this country was once like—and what it can be again.

—Carly Mayberry has written for Newsweek, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter and currently writes for Newsmax