Actor Dennis Quaid, who’s been through all the usual movie-star craziness, from addiction to tabloid divorce, seems to have turned into a poster boy for family values. The Houston-born Quaid, who turns 57 next weekend, has moved with his wife, Kimberly, and their 3-year-old twins, Thomas and Zoe, to Austin, where Kimberly is an agent in the family real estate business. But, can he make a go of it there? “I sure hope so. Or else, I’ve made a terrible mistake,” the actor laughed at NorthPark Center Saturday, walking the red carpet at the Dallas International Film Festival for his latest flick, called Soul Surfer. Hollywood’s just a phone call away, he said, and in Austin he can be “close to family. Plus, it’s a great place to live.”
Quaid’s also drawing on his family for creative inspiration, he said. In this latest film, which is based on a true story, he plays the father of teenage surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost her left arm in a shark attack but overcame the ordeal to surf again. Quaid (pictured in photo by Jeanne Prejean) recalled how just 12 days after his twins were born, they were mistakenly given massive overdoses of a drug called heparin. “It could have been fatal. But through the power of prayer from a lot of people, they survived that, and we had a happy ending,” he said. “So, I could relate to the Hamilton family that way.”
