Dennis Quaid is drawn to projects that strike fear on first encounter.
“You take that fear and you channel it, and you use it. Then what it is is energy,” said Quaid, actor and, some may be surprised to know, singer-songwriter. Fear is what ignited some of his most inspired moments while writing his latest album, “Fallen: A Gospel Record for Sinners,” and what drove him to say yes to playing Ronald Reagan in the upcoming biopic “Reagan,” which spans the life of the late president and is told from the perspective of a KGB agent.
“Fear is really inspirational,” Quaid said with a laugh.
Seeking God
“Fallen,” the album, was 30 years in the making, he explained, built around a song he had earlier written for his mother, “On My Way to Heaven.”
“I was coming out of addiction at that time, and I wrote the song to let my mother know that I was okay,” said Quaid, who has been open about his struggle with cocaine in the ’80s. The song was released with the addition of a bridge he penned within minutes, on the soundtrack of the 2018 faith-based film “I Can Only Imagine.”
