Looking at his career, Dennis Quaid is well known for playing heroes, from Annie and Hallie’s dad in Parent Trap to an inspiring baseball coach in The Rookie to an astronaut in The Right Stuff. It’s about time the 65-year-old actor try his hand at the bad guy, and in his newest role in The Intruder, he plays a menacing threat to one couple’s new life in Napa Valley.
The upcoming thriller helmed by Deon Taylor, the director behind Traffik and Meet the Blacks, has Quaid playing an older man who sells Scott and Annie (Michael Ealy and Meagan Good) his home, but doesn’t know how to let go of his beloved property. During a recent press day for The Intruder, I spoke to Taylor about his time working with the legendary actor and he was floored with the eagerness he had with crafting a seriously creepy new villain. In his words:
When he came to this movie and looked me in my eyes, he was like ‘hey, I want to make this guy crazy’ and he was really turned on by the idea of working and creating, growing and building the character… He was like ‘Let’s figure out how we can make Charlie Peck historically a classic’ and I was like ‘Alright! What do we gotta do?’ He was willing to bend the character and make this guy come to life and wow, he’s great.
The Intruder lead actors also gushed about Dennis Quaid’s performance in the horror flick, with Michael Ealy expressing how fun it was to watch him switch things up. Here’s what Ealy told CinemaBlend about his time working with Quaid:
Nothing like what I expected. I think we have all seen Dennis play these heroic characters. To watch him kind of break bad, it was dope.
Meagan Good explained that being on set with Quaid was freeing for them as well because he was given that space to shape his character. In her words:
Yeah, he was excited to do it, like he couldn’t wait to jump in and try stuff. That was kind of the thing that happened. Nothing was too planned. We were living with it and experiencing and whatever magic came out of that, came out of that. It was fun watching him work and for all of us to play.
Check out the actors and director Deon Taylor explain what it was like working with Dennis Quaid as he approached the frightening Charlie Peck in the movie in our interview:
As Deon Taylor notes, he didn’t know Dennis Quaid before this movie and decided to write him a letter about his interest in casting him in The Intruder. When the actor signed on, he was ready to go all in and do something “classic” with him. Did the actor succeed? You can decide for yourself when The Intruder hits theaters this weekend along with Long Shot and Ugly Dolls.
