Hollywood golden couple Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid: Why they really split

SHE was the rom-com queen, he a handsome movie star. But Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan’s marriage was wracked by drug addiction and intense jealousy.

Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan Picture: SGranitz/WireImage

ACTOR Dennis Quaid opened up about his cocaine addiction and how it got to the point where he was sleeping only one hour a night in an interview that aired this week.

Quaid, 64, said he started to use cocaine when he first arrived in Hollywood. He would vow to stop doing the drug, but by the early evening he would be back at it, he said, in a clip from Meghan Kelly Today.

“I was basically doing cocaine pretty much on a daily basis during the ’80s,” Quaid said. “I spent many, many a night screaming at God to ‘Please take this away from me, I’ll never do it again because I’ve only got an hour before I have to be at work.’

At the height of his fame, Quaid was surviving on just one hour of sleep per night. Picture: AP

“Then about 4 o’clock in the afternoon I would be, ‘Oh, that’s not so bad.’ I had a white light experience where I saw myself either dead or losing everything that meant anything to me,” he said.

“I saw myself either dead or losing everything that meant anything to me,” Dennis Quaid on his addiction to cocaine and when he decided to get help and go to rehab. #MegynTODAY pic.twitter.com/3imer8FShJ

— Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) July 23, 2018

Quaid said by the time he was starring in the 1987 hit The Big Easy, he was starting to hit rock bottom and getting about one hour of sleep a night.

“I had a reputation for being a ‘bad boy,’ which seemed like a good thing, but basically I just had my head stuck up my a**,” the actor said.

Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid in 1996. Picture: AP

Quaid also touched on his marriage to actress Meg Ryan. He said Ryan’s fame “weighed” on him during their time together, adding it affected his career.

“When we met, I was the big deal,” he said. But then Ryan’s star rose thanks to roles in rom com hits like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle.

“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,” Quaid said.

The couple divorced in 2001 and have one son together.

This story originally appeared on Fox News and has been republished here with permission.

Originally published as Hollywood golden couple Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid: Why they really split