Dennis Quaid looked positively giddy as he reunited with his ex-wife this week at their son's high school graduation, days after filing to end his child support payments. Quaid, 72, and Kimberly Buffington, 54, welcomed twins Zoe and Thomas via surrogate in 2007 and, after multiple splits and reconciliations, divorced in 2018, with the actor paying almost $14,000 a month in child support.
The Reagan star, who is worth an estimated $30 million, proudly posed with Thomas and Zoe, 18, and his stoic former partner Buffington at the prestigious, $45,000-a-year Oaks Christian School in Los Angeles. Quaid looked sharp in a dapper navy suit as he attended the festivities with his current bride, Laura Savoie, 33.
While Quaid and Buffington kept a distance between each other during the day, a friendly Quaid was seen briefly tapping his ex on the back as Savoie excitedly hugged Zoe. Buffington and Zoe looked like twins in cream ensembles as they proudly watched Thomas take to the stage to receive his diploma.
Child Support Filing
Last month, it emerged that Quaid is filing legal documents to ensure his monthly payments will end once both teenagers are awarded their diplomas. Quaid pays a base rate of $13,750 in monthly child support, with markups possible if his earnings rise above a particular level. With Zoe having graduated high school on May 23 and Thomas now graduating on June 3, Quaid is hoping to make certain the cessation of his payments. The hearing date for Quaid's Request for Order or Modification of Child Support is scheduled for July 28.
Family and Career
Quaid has been married since 2020 to his fourth wife, Savoie, who is nearly four decades his junior and a year younger than his son, Jack Quaid, whom he had with his second wife, Meg Ryan. At the moment, Quaid can still boast of a busy work schedule, with three film releases this year alone, including the Netflix action thriller War Machine, led by Alan Ritchson. He also has a number of upcoming projects in various stages of completion, such as the film The Florist featuring French screen legend Jean Reno and an AMC series called Thunder Road starring Quaid as a NASCAR legend.
Quaid enjoyed his first flush of celebrity in 1979 when he appeared in Breaking Away, a coming-of-age film about recent high school graduates. As he moved into the 1980s, he rose to further prominence through The Right Stuff, The Big Easy, and Great Balls of Fire! However, the drug-fueled whirl of the era's showbiz milieu was evidently irresistible to Quaid, who plunged into a galloping cocaine addiction. Explaining that drugs were included on 'some movie budgets,' he once told Megyn Kelly: 'You know, I was doing cocaine pretty much on a daily basis during the '80s.'
'I spent many, many nights screaming at God to take this away from me,' he told the interviewer during her stint on NBC's Today show. 'I'll never do it again, because I've only got an hour before I've gotta be at work.' In the end, he told People he had a 'white light' moment in which he 'saw myself either dead or in jail or losing everything I had,' prompting him to get sober in 1990. Searching for a way to 'fill the hole' left by drugs, he explored a variety of religious texts including the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita before returning to the Christian faith of his upbringing and 'developing a personal relationship' with God.
A couple of years ago, when his twins were 16, Quaid revealed the advice he gave his children before they struck out into the working world. His firstborn son, Jack, had already followed his footsteps into acting and achieved success in his own right as one of the stars of Amazon show The Boys. 'I tell my kids to find something you love to do, then figure out a way to get paid for it,' Quaid told Fox News. 'I don't push them either way. They are who they are.'
