Six years after trading Los Angeles for Nashville, actor and musician Dennis Quaid sounds perfectly content with a day built around golf, home and good friends.
“Basically, I play golf,” Quaid told PEOPLE. “I love to be around the house here. You get a lot of land and space, but you’re still in an urban environment.”
“I’ve made some really good friends here to spend time with,” he added. “It’s important and a great place to raise a family.”
Quaid, 72, and his wife, Laura Savoie, moved to Tennessee in 2020 after decades in California. Nashville gave them a rare combination: open land without total isolation, a thriving city nearby and neighbors who became real friends.
That sense of community has taken on extra weight for Quaid because he remembers when Hollywood offered more of it. Before self-taped auditions became the norm, actors met one another face to face while waiting to read for the same roles.
“It used to be if you were auditioning for something, you’d go to an office. You’d go in and there would be five people dressed just like you, all up for the same part, waiting for time to read. You met a lot of people that way and that’s where a community was formed,” he recalled.
“Now everybody puts something on tape in their room and sends it in,” Quaid said. “You don’t have this feeling of community over that.”
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The veteran actor believes that shift has changed where young performers need to live. If he were starting today, Quaid said he would choose Atlanta over Los Angeles.
Quaid has not hidden his disappointment with the city that helped build his career. During a Fox News Digital interview at CMA Fest in June, he said Los Angeles had declined and criticized the gap between the taxes residents pay and the public services they receive.
“I’m just one of thousands who have left, and I don’t know, I hope the town comes back,” he said at the time. “I really do. It used to be such a fantastic town.”
Still, Quaid has not locked the door behind him. He said he might consider returning if conditions improve, but Tennessee’s gentler pace keeps winning the day.
“It’s so nice here in Tennessee,” he said. “It’s soft, and it’s a real feeling of community.”
Quaid has been making that point for years. In a 2023 Variety interview, he contrasted Hollywood’s culture of reinvention with Nashville’s demand for honesty, saying musicians have to bring their authentic selves to the work.
“People come to Nashville to create music where you have to be yourself,” he said. “So, you become more of yourself.”
Nashville has also given Quaid room to join his creative work with his Christian faith. His gospel project, Fallen: A Gospel Record for Sinners, grew from his own story of addiction, sobriety and redemption.
That journey returned to center stage this summer when Quaid and country music star Tanya Tucker introduced the “On My Way to Heaven” music video at the Grand Ole Opry. The Gaither Music Group event paired Quaid and Tucker with one of singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson’s final on-camera performances.
“I wrote this song as a reflection on redemption, sobriety, faith, and the journey of finding peace after life’s struggles,” Quaid said.
For him, the move to Nashville has become more than an escape from Hollywood’s headaches; it has created space for friendship, family, honest work and the kind of everyday fellowship he had been missing.
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