Dennis Quaid calls Meg Ryan marriage his ‘most successful’

Dennis Quaid has fond memories of his time with Meg Ryan. The Regan actor opened up in a new interview about his 10-year marriage to the You’ve Got Mail actress.

“[It was] my most successful relationship,” Quaid, 64, said on Megyn Kelly Today on Monday, July 23. “When we met, you know, I was the big deal. And then my career [came to a halt]. … We’d go out on the streets of New York and it would be like, ‘Meg! Meg!’ And I have to admit it, I actually did feel like I disappeared. I didn’t think I was that small, but I was. It was a growth opportunity. I learned from that.”

The Parent Trap star and Ryan, 56, fell in love on the set of D.O.A. They wed in 1991 and welcomed a son named Jack, now 26, the following year. The couple divorced in 2001.

Quaid also shares twins Thomas and Zoe, 10, with his ex-wife Kimberly Buffington, to whom he was married from 2004 until they finalized their divorce this April. He is now dating model Santa Auzina.

“I like to be in a relationship. I do. It’s more fun,” Quaid said on the NBC talk show, noting that he does not care about the age difference between him and his 32-year-old girlfriend. “We don’t think about it. I’m sure a lot of other people do, but hey, they’ll just have to get used to it.”

But long before the Day After Tomorrow actor was lucky in love, he fell on some hard times. Through the years, he has spoken candidly about his past addiction to cocaine and his subsequent rehab stint.

“I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s and there was a completely different attitude about it back then, even in some movie budgets,” he recalled on Monday. “I kept roaring on. I was basically doing cocaine pretty much on a daily basis in the early ‘80s. I spent many, many a night screaming at God to please take this away from me. … I had what I call a white light experience where I saw myself either dead or losing everything that meant anything to me.”