Dennis Quaid was a movie star when you were still in diapers.

He caught the world's attention with his role in Breaking Away in 1979, and over the following three decades he appeared in dozens of movies, including The Right Stuff, The Big Easy, D.O.A., Wyatt Earp, Any Given Sunday, Frequency, Traffic, Dinner With Friends, The Parent Trap, The Rookie, Far From Heaven, The Day After Tomorrow, Smart People and The Express.

Quaid, 55, has a respected band called the Sharks, he writes music for film, he's directed two movies, he's appeared on Broadway, he's won Emmy Awards for television and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He's a pilot, a heckuva skilled golfer, a father of three and a stand-up guy.

And he's busy. Quaid helped G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra rake in money at the box office all summer, and he has three other movies on the go right now. One of them is Pandorum, a sci-fi drama about astronauts lost in deep space with no memory of their mission. Quaid stars with Ben Foster and Cam Gigandet in the claustrophobic thriller, which opened yesterday.

Funny -- so many of Quaid's current movie projects deal with the end of the world.

"I think it started with The Day After Tomorrow," he says over the phone from Los Angeles. "I've been working quite a bit -- and that may have something to do with the end of the world, too." He laughs. "There have been good scripts coming to me, and the way I choose a movie is by reading. It's the only time I get to be an audience member, and Pandorum, I thought, was a great story and a great character.

"And it's scary."

Quaid was formerly married to Meg Ryan, with whom he has a teenaged son. The actor and his wife, Kimberly Buffington, were in the news last year when their infant twins were given an adult dose of Heparin, a blood thinner. As the twins now approach their second birthday, Quaid says they are "healthy and happy and you couldn't ask for more. Everything's really groovy."

Quaid is currently filming The Special Relationship, a movie about the friendship between President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Quaid has gained a bit of weight to play Clinton.

"It's a daunting role to take on," he says.

"I knew Clinton when he was in the White House, so to take on the role was a challenge. He's never been done except in parody before."

The movie was written by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon and The Queen).

"What Morgan does is take you backstage, in these historic people's lives, and kind of give you the mundane, those bits of stories about their fascinating life that you didn't get to see, as well as the history of it. He humanizes them."

Asked to characterize his career at the moment, Quaid says, "I'm doing okay. There's always that sense of insecurity. It's just part of life. The thing about being an actor, though, is that you're starting a brand new job and a brand new thing every time.

"First few days, I always think, 'I really suck. I don't know why they hired me to do this, because I really suck.' But then it's like a suit of clothes you put on. You put on the character every day.

"It's the greatest job in the world, and I love it."

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