Dennis Quaid, 70, shared that he named his son Jack, 31, after a world-renowned movie star he first met back in the 1970s.
In 1975, Dennis visited the set of a western called The Missouri Breaks that featured his older brother Randy in a supporting role.
Directed by Arthur Penn, the film featured a world-class cast including Marlon Brando, Harry Dean Stanton and Frederic Forrest.
But there was one actor in The Missouri Breaks who had an especially strong impact on Dennis, who was still jobbing around in showbiz and had yet to become famous.
More than a decade later in 1992, Dennis welcomed a son with his second wife Meg Ryan – and named him after this movie star, he told E! News.
Dennis Quaid, 70, shared that he named his son Jack, 31, after a world-renowned movie star he first met back in the 1970s; father and son are pictured in 2015
Dennis met the legendary actor in 1975, years before he himself became a star; he is pictured this Thursday at the CinemaCon Big Screen Achievement Awards in Las Vegas
In a new interview, Dennis revealed that Jack was named after none other than Jack Nicholson, who was by then already an A-list celebrity.
‘I just got to L.A. and my brother got a part in a movie called Missouri Breaks. So I drove my brother’s car up to Montana,’ he recalled.
‘My very first movie set, I’m watching these actors, my real heroes. We hung out at Jack Nicholson’s house every night. He and Randy were good friends.’
Dennis recalled that the actors in the film ‘gave me a lot of encouragement. And that’s a true story that we named him Jack after that.’
Currently Dennis is married to his fourth wife Laura Savoie, who is 31 years old and just a few months younger than her stepson Jack.
Dennis announced late in 2019 that he had gotten engaged to Laura – and then over the summer of 2020 they eloped in Santa Barbara.
Laura and Dennis’ romance has repeatedly hit the headlines over the years, on account of the fact she is 39 years younger than he is.
He has previously been married to Carrie actress PJ Soles, Jack’s mother Meg Ryan and Texas realtor Kimberly Buffington.
In 1975, Dennis visited the set of a western called The Missouri Breaks that featured his older brother Randy in a supporting role alongside Jack Nicholson (left) and Marlon Brando (right)
F(left to right, top to bottom) Frederic Forrest, Jack Nicholson, John P Ryan, Randy Quaid and Harry Dean Stanton are all pictured in a publicity still for the movie
More than a decade later in 1992, Dennis welcomed a son with his second wife Meg Ryan – and named him after Jack Nicholson; Dennis and Meg are pictured in 1996
Kimberly and Dennis, who went through multiple splits and reconciliations before their final divorce, share 16-year-old twins Zoe and Thomas.
Dennis enjoyed his first flush of celebrity in 1979 when he appeared in his breakout movie Breaking Away, a coming-of-age film about recent high school graduates.
As he moved into the 1980s, he rose to prominence through such pictures as The Right Stuff, The Big Easy and Great Balls Of Fire!.
However, the drug-fueled whirl of the era’s showbiz milieu was impossible to resist for Dennis, who plunged into a cocaine addiction.
Explaining that drugs were included on ‘some movie budgets,’ Dennis once said: ‘You know, I was doing cocaine pretty much on a daily basis during the 80s.’
He told Megyn Kelly during her stint on the Today show: ‘I spent many, many nights screaming at God to take this away from me. I’ll never do it again, because I’ve only got an hour before I’ve gotta be at work.’
During an interview with Larry King on CNN decades ago, Dennis claimed that ‘cocaine at that time was considered harmless.’
He recalled reading doctors in magazines ‘saying, it is not addicting. It is just – alcohol is worse. So I think we all fell into that. But that’s not the way it was.’
Currently Dennis is married to his fourth wife Laura Savoie, whom he is pictured with at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas this Thursday
Covering People last year, he looked back on the moment he decided to stop, sharing: ‘I remember going home and having kind of a white light experience that I saw myself either dead or in jail or losing everything I had, and I didn’t want that.’
Dennis revealed: ‘I was in a band and we got a record gig…. They broke up the night they got it, and they broke up because of me, because I was not reliable.’
He checked into rehab and reconnected to Christianity, on the grounds that addicts fall back on the drugs ‘to fill a hole inside us. When you’re done with the addiction, you need something to fill that hole, something that really works, right?’
The year he sobered up, 1990, he attempted to reassure his mother Juanita by penning the Christian song On My Way To Heaven.
His aim in writing the musical number was ‘to let her know I was okay, because I wasn’t okay before then,’ Dennis explained.
In his post-cocaine quest to find religion, Dennis initially sampled multiple options, poring through the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran.
However, it was ultimately the Christian faith he was reared on that managed to provide him the solace he needed in the absence of drugs.
‘That’s when I started developing a personal relationship. Before that, I didn’t have one, even though I grew up as a Christian,’ he shared.