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Six-foot four-inch, beefy character actor with rubbery, homely face, Quaid's first professional show-business work was as the "straight man" half of a comedy duo with actor Trey Wilson in Houston. While a third-year college drama student he was cast by Peter Bogdanovich in a supporting role in The Last Picture Show (1971), then went on to have small roles in Bogdanovich's next two movies. He made a big impression as a naive sailor alongside Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973), for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. By the mid '70s, he worked in films frequently, usually typecast as a dim-witted fool or redneck. In the mid '80s he was (for one season) in the regular cast of the weekly sketch-comedy series "Saturday Night Live," on which he demonstrated his considerable comedic talent and often impersonated President Ronald Reagan. More recently he has gotten straight dramatic roles, a transition marked by his off-Broadway stage debut in True West in 1983. He has also worked frequently in TV movies, portraying Lenny in Of Mice and Men (1981) and Lyndon Johnson in LBJ: The Early Days (1987); for his portrayal of Mitch in the TV version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1984) he won an Emmy. He is the brother of actor Dennis Quaid, with whom he appeared in The Long Riders (1980).