Why Dennis Quaid Acts: ‘I Love to Do It’
By Movieguide® Contributor
While accepting this year’s Movieguide® Grace Prize for Movie Performance, Dennis Quaid explained what acting means to him and why he has continued to do it for decades.
“Thank you so much. I’m really very honored. Awards are recognition, and I just—I’ve loved being an actor my whole life, and I still love it as much, in fact, even more than when I was a kid doing it or when I was trying to get somewhere. You know, I do it because I love to do it,” Quaid said while accepting the award.
“It’s always gratifying to hear from people and I think that’s what these awards are about too, you know, to hear from people that are touched by the movies we make,” he continued. “What we put out there reverberates, sometimes [across] generations and it means something, it does. God bless you.”
Movieguide®’s Grace Prize is awarded to the actor who best shares the Gospel through their performance and helps viewers better understand God’s love. This year’s nominees for the movie category included Khris Davis and Forest Whitaker from BIG GEORGE FOREMAN, Kelsey Grammer, Anna Grace Barlow and Joel Courtney from JESUS REVOLUTION, Fiona Palomo and Joel Smallbone from JOURNEY TO BETHLEHEM and finally Dennis Quaid from ON A WING AND A PRAYER.
ON A WING AND A PRAYER tells the true story of Doug White (Quaid) who, with no previous flight experience, takes control of a plane after the pilot dies. With little help from air traffic control, high winds and a storm causing more difficulties, White and his family must rely on prayer and have faith in God that a miracle will occur. A portion of Movieguide®s review reads:
ON A WING AND A PRAYER has a strong Christian, moral, wholesome worldview, with powerful scenes of prayer. Doug and his family consistently pray to God for safety and in gratitude as they think landing the plane is impossible. Despite everything going wrong, their faith helps them overcome their fear in this miraculous true story. ON A WING AND A PRAYER has some intense action, a few light obscenities and a scene where an air traffic controller gets drunk. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger children.
As evident by the strong list of nominees for this year’s Grace Prize®, 2023 was a year brimming with faith-filled movies. 2024 will follow suit as Hollywood beings to realize that there is a strong case to make movies for Christian audiences.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Filmmaker Karl Horstmann says Hollywood is finally ready to start giving resources to Christian movies after seeing the box office success of projects like THE CHOSEN and JESUS REVOLUTION.
Horstmann produced two faith-based movies this year — ON A WING AND A PRAYER and SOUTHERN GOSPEL.
In an interview with Christian Headlines, Horstmann explained that Christian movies are improving in quality due to an increase in resources.
“Hollywood looks at faith films now as a legitimate genre,” he said. “Even 10 years ago, they were not seen that way. I think they were most often seen as niche specialty films, and I think [the reason] the faith market has done so well is because the audiences have turned out to support these films in such big ways, in big numbers, like with I CAN ONLY IMAGINE.”
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