To begin with the obvious question: Why Reagan?
Dennis Quaid chuckled in response to the query, then replied with a question of his own: “Do you mean the man or the movie?” Maybe both?
For the benefit of those who tuned in late: Reagan, director Sean McNamara’s independently produced biographical film about Ronald Reagan, features Quaid in the title role as the 40th president of the United States. The biopic, due for an early 2023 theatrical release, focuses on the widely admired actor-turned-politician widely known to friends and admirers as “The Gipper” — a nickname he earned for playing ill-fated college football star George Gipp in the classic 1940 drama Knute Rockne: All-American — while following him from his Illinois childhood to his Hollywood heyday to his White House residency. The supporting cast includes Penelope Ann Miller as first lady Nancy Reagan; Mena Suvari as Jane Wyman, Reagan’s first wife; Lesley-Anne Down as British prime minister Margaret Thatcher; Kevin Dillon as Warner Bros. studio chief Jack Warner; and Jon Voight as a KGB agent who tracked Reagan for 40 years.
And Quaid is the first to admit he was initially reluctant to sign on for the movie.
Mind you, he wasn’t averse to portraying a real-life person. Throughout an extraordinarily diverse career that has spanned six decades, the Houston-born actor has played such notable figures (1980), astronaut Gordon Cooper in
