What’s Going On With Independence Day Star Randy Quaid?

He’s an Oscar nominee, brother of Dennis and known for roles in everything from ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ to ‘Brokeback Mountain’. But over the last few years, Randy Quaid has become better known as a conspiracy theorist in frequent trouble with the law. So 20 years on from taking on aliens in ‘Independence Day’, what’s he’s up to?

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Randy Quaid is a Bernie Sanders supporter. So much so, in fact, that when the Presidential candidate challenged Donald Trump to a TV debate, he took to his Twitter feed and did a dance in his pants to celebrate.

The problem is, that’s one of the least eccentric things the 65-year-old actor has done recently.

Randy’s faltering career

Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in the 1973 Jack Nicholson movie ‘The Last Detail’, Quaid’s talent has never been in question.

After an auspicious start in gritty classics like ‘The Last Picture Show’ and ‘Midnight Express’, he gradually became somewhat typecast as an idiotic sidekick – not helped by playing Cousin Eddie in a succession of ‘Vacation’ movies – but whether it was in underrated comic gem ‘Kingpin’ or ‘Brokeback Mountain’, he always delivered.

Unfortunately, behind the scenes it was beginning to come off the rails. He sued the producers of the Academy Award-winning cowboy movie, arguing he was tricked into taking a salary cut because he was told it was a low-budget indie film.

The pinnacle came when he was fined by the actors’ union and then publicly criticised by the producers following issues during the Seattle theatre run of ‘Lone Star Love’, a musical play based on Shakespeare’s ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’.

Playing legendary comic rogue Falstaff, it was reported that his behaviour behind-the-scenes caused impossible tension and the show’s planned Broadway transfer was put on indefinite hold.

In response, Quaid told The Seattle Times, “I am guilty of only one thing: Giving a performance that elicited a response so deeply felt by the actors and producers with little experience of my creative process that they actually think I am Falstaff.”

He has subsequently said on YouTube that his being hired for the play was actually a “ruse for title insurance fraud”, suggesting his participation was manufactured to get him out of town on a specific date so fraudsters could sell his home out from under him.

Who is Evi Quaid?

A former It Girl and model, she’s been married to Randy since 1989 after he proposed on the same day they met.

According to many who knew her husband during his glory days, she’s the architect of his – and their – downfall. Some argue she simply spent all his money and then blamed it on a non-existent shadowy cabal.

Certainly, she’s got her critics within the Quaid family itself. When Meg Ryan left Randy’s little brother Dennis for Russell Crowe, the younger Quaid asked her to find him a new piece of art for his house. Her choice? An Andy Warhol print of a Native American activist entitled ‘What Russell Means’.

“It turned into, like, a play,” Evi told Vanity Fair. “It was insane, with Dennis screaming at me and Randy screaming at Dennis and their mother screaming at both of them.”

Legal troubles

The pair have had several scrapes with the law, most recently in October 2015 when they were freed from jail after being arrested in Vermont.

They’d lived in Canada since 2010, even applying at one point for refugee status, having apparently skipped out on charges of vandalism and unauthorised entry brought in Santa Barbara when they were found squatting in a home they previously owned there.

While trying to come back into the US, they were grabbed and initially considered ‘fugitives’, a charge which a Vermont judge threw out.

As for the ongoing case in California? “We’ve always said we were innocent,” said Randy told NBC outside the courthouse.

Hollywood Star Whackers

Quaid and Evi think that there are a group of high-level movie players out to kill them. Not shoot them in the head, but destroy them by stealing their livelihood and more specifically Randy’s royalty cheques from the hit films he’s been in.

These so-called whackers are also behind the deaths of Heath Ledger and ‘Kill Bill’ star David Carradine (both friends of Randy), despite both actors’ passing being ruled accidental.

“They follow us, they tail us, they tag our cellphone, they hack our computer,” explained Quaid to ABC News. The couple even hired a private eye to investigate who might be after them.

The detective, Becky Altringer, told Vanity Fair, “I started researching. And there really is no mob, nobody was out to kill them…But when I tried to tell Evi that, she went nuts and said, ‘No, you’re wrong.’”

Altringer ended up filing three suits against the Quaids for non-payment which were settled out of court.

What happens next?

Who knows. Having accused several prominent Hollywood dealmakers of trying to destroy him, Quaid might find it difficult to get another acting job and the couple have admitted that sometimes they choose to sleep in their car.

In the meantime, the increasingly Dumbledore-esque star seems content to post homemade public service announcements on YouTube urging people to investigate the small print of their home ownership documents.

The rift with his brother Dennis doesn’t look likely to improve either, thanks to an April 2015 online video in which Randy questions the extent of his sibling’s involvement in some of his and Evi’s financial problems.

Maybe they’re right – maybe there is someone out to get them. After all, you’re not being paranoid if someone’s really after you.

But if they’re not correct, then fans can only hope that somehow everything is resolved without too much drama. Of course, there is another alternative – that maybe by 2025, there’ll be an Oscar for Best Dancing In Underwear on Social Media. No-one else stands a chance.

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Image credits: Rex_Shutterstock, Twitter/Randy Quaid