Dennis Quaid admits he has an obsessive-compulsive personality, which goes a long way toward explaining his outrageous preparation for the coveted role of Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp.
Holliday, the legendary dentist turned gambler and gunfighter, suffered from tuberculosis and has been described in accounts of the day as being slightly built and sickly looking. The feared killer weighed all of 135 pounds.
So it made sense that director Lawrence Kasdan would suggest to the athletically built, 6-foot-1, 182-pound Quaid that he might think about losing 10 pounds for the role.
Being the kind of guy that he is, Quaid took Kasdan’s ball and ran with it.
When he reported to the set of Wyatt Earp, Quaid was a frighteningly thin 139 pounds. He had lost 43 pounds.
“Everybody around me was worried about my health, but I felt great,” said Quaid, 40, married to actress Meg Ryan.
“I had a nutritionist and a physician monitoring me at all times, and I never got sick. Everybody on the set got the flu at least twice during the shoot, and I never got it.
“But I will admit that the day I hit 139 pounds, I looked in the mirror and got a little scared,” he added. “I hadn’t weighed 139 since I was 14, and I looked like a skeleton. That’s when I decided to stop losing weight and start maintaining.”
Quaid said he ran 5 to 9 miles a day and was restricted to a fat-free, 1,200-calorie-a-day diet during his weight loss.
“It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “We had a great caterer on the set, and it was almost impossible to keep away from that food. All my muscles sort of shrunk up and dwindled, but I felt it was necessary for the part.
“I don’t know how to describe my motivation, but I really wanted to play this role and, when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t see Doc Holliday. From a physical standpoint, I just wasn’t him. I kept seeing this 182-pound guy. I felt that way every day until I hit 139 pounds.”(He has since regained all the weight.) The reason Quaid was willing to go to such lengths is that Doc Holliday is no ordinary screen role.
The role of the well-educated Southern gentleman who moved West because of his illness and then was forced to give up dentistry because he kept coughing on his patients is considered a scene-stealing tour de force for actors.
Among those who have played Holliday on the big screen are Kirk Douglas (Gunfight at the OK Corral), Victor Mature (My Darling Clementine) and, most recently, Val Kilmer (Tombstone).
“I consider the role of Doc Holliday almost Shakespearean in scope, like Hamlet or MacBeth,” said Quaid, who says that Douglas’ portrayal is probably his favorite.
“There is something very classical about the role,” Quaid said. “This was a very gentle man forced into a hard life. He drank 2 quarts of whiskey a day to ease the pain and became a gambler because there is no better profession for a man who thinks he is going to die each day.”
