Dennis Quaid admits he took things a bit over the edge while preparing to play rock ‘n’ roll bad boy Jerry Lee Lewis in his 1989 biopic “Great Balls of Fire!”
Already a bonafide movie star thanks to his roles in films like “The Right Stuff,” “The Big Easy,” and “D.O.A.,” the then-34-year-old Quaid immersed himself in learning to play the piano like the flamboyant Lewis, who in the late 1950s had a string of hits like “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “Great Balls of Fire,” and “High School Confidential.”
“I had to look like I knew what I was doing,” Quaid told Business Insider while looking back on his career in our latest “Role Play” interview.
That also extended to Lewis’ famously frenetic onstage antics, which included banging the piano keys with his heels and kicking his piano bench aside to play standing up.
Quaid was so dedicated to getting Lewis right on the big screen that he spent 12 hours a day learning to play the piano.
“I had plenty of time to prepare for it, a year,” Quaid said.
He also let slip that he used some enhancements to get through it.
“Plus, I was also on cocaine, so that made it a little simpler to be at the piano 12 hours at a time,” he said.
The actor has been open over the years about his addiction to cocaine. In 2018, he told Megyn Kelly that he did the drug on a daily basis through the 1980s.
It was a year after “Great Balls of Fire!” was released that Quaid, who was then engaged to Meg Ryan, went to rehab.
“I remember going home and having a white light experience that I saw myself either dead or in jail or losing everything I had, and I didn’t want that,” he told People in 2023 about his addiction.
Decades later, as quickly as Quaid jokes about his condition back in the late 1980s, he understands that the dangers of the drug are no laughing matter.
“I’m not advocating to take cocaine to learn how to play the piano,” he told BI in a serious tone. “You will wind up in a bad place.”
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