DATE: Sunday, November 2, 1997              TAG: 9710300217

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E16  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

QUAID'S LIFE TAKES A SWITCHBACK

DENNIS QUAID'S latest role, as an FBI agent pursuing a serial killer into the Colorado Rockies in ``Switchback,'' casts him as a quiet, committed man who doesn't give much of himself away. He's on a single-minded mission - no nonsense.

Not long ago, no Hollywood producer would have considered him for the part. A movie star at age 25 (as a working-class tough in ``Breaking Away''), he sowed his wild oats. There were stories about drugs. He was a rock-'n'-roller in the band ``The Electrics.'' There were dates with varied Hollywood beauties, and difficulties with the press.

The Dennis Quaid who meets us for the current interview is a different person. He's quiet, but at ease. He smiles slightly when he's asked if he had trouble being so restrained and introspective throughout ``Switchback.''

``No, it wasn't difficult,'' he said. ``I'm a husband and a father now. Today, I've got to go and pick up my kid, age 5, from kindergarten. It's my day. That calms you down - just having to take care of things like that.''

He's married to blond, blue-eyed, pert Meg Ryan. She's the girl guys would most like to take home to meet mother.

He met her 10 years ago on the set of ``Innerspace,'' followed by a whirlwind, live-in courtship that had marriage on-again, off-again in daily press reports.

Now, the marriage seems sound, in spite of separate movie careers, and the fact that she has more hit films than he does. ``It's a matter of scheduling,'' he said. ``We arrange it so that we don't work at the same time and so that we can visit on the set of the other's film.''

``Switchback'' was not an attractive visit, though. Filming was done in 20-below-zero temperatures in the Colorado Rockies.

The part required Quaid to fall onto a moving train and hang precariously on the edge of a snowplow high above the Colorado River. ``I did most of the stunt stuff myself, because close-ups were necessary,'' he said. ``The cold was worse than the danger. You had to keep moving to stay alive. I was held by a harness. I couldn't have fallen. At least, that's what they told me.''

Ryan stayed away, except for the two weeks the company was in fashionable Vail, Colo. ``She was smart,'' Quaid said, smiling.

Back in Texas, Quaid began acting in high school and studied theater at the University of Houston, but it was his big brother, Randy Quaid, who got to Hollywood first. Randy got a role in ``The Last Picture Show,'' which sparked a lucrative career as a character player. Dennis, the good-looking brother, followed on his own.

``I went out to Los Angeles knowing the risks, and the likelihood that I would never make it. My goal was just to survive, to always keep enough money so that I wouldn't have to hitchhike back to Texas.'' At just 25, he got the breakthrough role in ``Breaking Away,'' which turned out to be a surprise hit.

He's had his share of flops, though. His last showcase commercial hit was ``The Big Easy'' in 1987 - a steaming-sexy New Orleans flick in which he was coupled with Ellen Barkin. ``When you make a movie like that, you keep thinking, `My mother's going to see this,' '' he said.

His most regrettable flop was ``The Right Stuff,'' the 1983 epic about American astronauts, which he says was mistakenly sold as a kind of patriotic vehicle for John Glenn's aborted run for the presidency.

Critics, though, began to take note of his acting ability with ``Flesh and Bone'' and especially his showcase role as Southern aristocrat-gunman Doc Holliday in Kevin Costner's ``Wyatt Earp.'' For the latter, he was asked to play a dying alcoholic and got into the role thoroughly - losing so much weight that his wife became alarmed. As it turned out, his performance was the only thing critics liked about the epic Western.

To play a man who is in fear of his child's life in ``Switchback,'' he says he actually tried not to get too involved. ``I could walk away from the role at night and go back to the hotel,'' he said. ``I don't have to live my parts as I used to. Now, I guess I'm grounded more in a real life. I have something other than roles.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MELISSA MOSELEY

Dennis Quaid portrays an FBI agent... KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MOVIES

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