Bio
Dennis Quaid is an American actor whose notable credits include Breaking Away, The Long Riders, The Right Stuff, Enemy Mine, Great Balls of Fire!, The Big Easy, Far from Heaven, The Rookie, The Day After Tomorrow, Traffic, Vantage Point, Footloose, Frequency, Wyatt Earp, The Parent Trap, Soul Surfer, The Big Easy and Innerspace.
He is best known to television audiences for his starring role as Sheriff Ralph Lamb, a local rancher with service in the military police during World War II who is pressed into duty as Sheriff of Clark County when the Mob begins aggressively taking hold of the Las Vegas gaming industry, in the period drama series Vegas.
He is also an executive producer on Vegas, which was his first major role in television.
Quaid began acting in high school and studied theatre at the University of Houston. Soon after his arrival in Hollywood, he landed the plum role of a working-class tough in Breaking Away.
Quaid received honours from the New York Film Critics Circle in 2002, The Independent Spirit Awards as Best Supporting Actor of the Year in 2003, and also garnered nominations for a Golden Globe Award and Screen Actor's Guild Award for his performance in the critically acclaimed 2002 film Far From Heaven.
Quaid's feature film credits since 2011 include Beneath the Darkness, What to Expect When You're Expecting, Soul Surfer, Footloose and The Words with Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons and Olivia Wilde; and Playing the Field with Gerard Butler, Uma Thurman, Jessica Biel and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
In 2010 Quaid portrayed President Bill Clinton in the cable movie, The Special Relationship, for which he received Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations.
In 2015 he began starring in the Crackle original drama series The Art of More.
Born in Houston, Quaid now splits his time between homes in Los Angeles, Montana and Texas.