Cinematic Crush: Dennis Quaid

Crush object: Dennis Quaid, actor.

- Following his break out in Breaking Away, he has continued to bring his easy-going charm and chiseled good looks to the silver screen, most recently in Smart People,available on DVD tomorrow.

- He has played a surprising number of real people on the screen, including Ed Miller in The Long Riders, Gordon Cooper in The Right Stuff, Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire!, Doc Holiday in Wyatt Earp, Jimmy Morris in The Rookie and Sam Houston in The Alamo.

- In addition to biopics, his films include everything from science fiction (Enemy Mine, Innerspace) to pseudo-noir (The Big Easy, D.O.A.) to mysteries (Suspect, Flesh and Bone) to football sagas (Everybody's All-American, Any Given Sunday) to chick flicks (Postcards from the Edge, Something to Talk About) to fantasies (Dragonheart, Frequency) to family friendly fare (The Parent Trap; Yours, Mine and Ours) to ensemble dramas (Traffic, Vantage Point) to disaster epics (The Day After Tomorrow, Flight of the Phoenix) to at least one 3-D sequel about a man-eating shark (Jaws 3-D).

- Arguably his greatest performance was as Frank Whitaker, the closeted husband at the center of all the drama in Todd Haynes' Sirkian tour de force Far from Heaven. He won four critics' awards and a Golden Globe nomination, but, in a gross oversight, no Oscar nod.

- Next up in his busy schedule: another sports bio (The Express), mystery thriller (The Horsemen), disaster movie (Legion), sci-fi adventure (Pandorum) and his first real foray into a franchise films, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra.