Dennis Quaid has said he felt “humiliated” after losing out on an Oscar nomination for his performance in the 2002 period drama Far From Heaven.
The film was nominated for four Oscars, with Quaid’s co-star Julianne Moore receiving a Best Actress nod and Todd Haynes’s script making the Best Original Screenplay shortlist.
Quaid, who was led to believe he was a favourite to win an Oscar that year, let alone get a nomination, told The Guardian: “I felt embarrassed and a little humiliated. But then I thought, it’s silly putting my self-worth in any of this; this is not why I started doing it.”
He added: “The only real joy I get out of acting is when I’m on set. All the rest of it is a circus. I think it started to change from there.”
Quaid also spoke about the regret he feels about turning down hugely successful films, one of the most notable being the Tom Hanks 80s smash Big. “I turned down Tom Hanks’ career!” he said. “I turned down League of Their Own. Sleepless in Seattle was mine. And yet, all of a sudden, it wasn’t.
“I turned it down because of the director on it at the time. I said: ‘You should get Nora Ephron.’ But because I turned it down, they were free to do anything they wanted, so I wound up out of it [even though Ephron did direct] and my wife at the time [Meg Ryan] was in it!”
Quaid can next be seen in the Netflix sitcom Merry Happy Whatever, out on 28 November.
