The movie business has traditionally been hostile to people of faith.
But the landscape in Tinseltown could be changing.
And Dennis Quaid revealed something about faith in Hollywood that no one ever expected.
Veteran actor Dennis Quaid has experienced the highs and the lows of Hollywood during his more than four-decade career.
He became a star in the 1980s with hits like The Big Easy, but his career and his personal life ran into trouble in the 1990s.
Addiction to cocaine and an eating disorder preparing for the role of Wyatt Earp left him on the brink, but he used his faith to help get his life back on track.
Dennis Quaid talks about his journey to faith
In an interview with The Christian Post, Quaid said that he was raised as a Baptist who regularly attended Sunday School but lost faith at an early age.
“The subject matter turned me off,” Quaid said. “There were probably some other things, too. I started asking questions that didn’t have answers. I started to question my faith.”
He embarked on a search for a spiritual meaning that saw him investigate Buddhism and even Islam.
“I read the Bible cover to cover as well, back then, and I got hung up on the Old Testament, how violent it was. God seemed like a punishing God back then to me. A lot of it just didn’t make sense,” Quaid explained.
Quaid said he had a “hole” develop inside of him as he shot to fame in the movie business that he tried to fill with drugs.
But he got clean in the mid-1990s and reconnected with Christianity.
“I went back, and I read the Bible again, cover to cover, and what really struck me was that this time were the real words of Jesus and who He really was,” he recalled. “That was the beginning of my personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And that’s really what it’s all about. From there, it’s grown, and it does fill up that hole inside me. I was there all along; my mother taught me that, but we have to learn things for ourselves. It led me right back to where I started.”
Change in attitude in Hollywood toward faith
Recently, Quaid has starred in “faith-adjacent” movies like I Can Only Imagine and On a Wing and a Prayer.
“I’ve been actually kind of surprised by that, like by the success of I Can Only Imagine — it’s not a Hollywood movie,” Quaid said. “Hollywood doesn’t understand their audience anymore. People want to go to the movies to feel things and can’t just discount the spirit, and people hunger for that. And so these stories are really getting a lot of traction these days.”
Quaid said he was surprised about how accepting Hollywood was of his faith and suggested that it could be a sign of a “spiritual awakening.”
“I think there’s a spiritual awakening actually going on in our country right now,” Quaid said. “There’s been a lot of turmoil, and that’s what spiritual awakenings look like because of what it takes to get there. I think we’re right at the beginning of it.”
Dennis Quaid is part of a growing trend in Hollywood with actors like Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt who are openly expressing their faith.
Patriot Political will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
