Actor Dennis Quaid and his third wife, Kimberly Buffington Quaid, have announced they are divorcing.
“After careful consideration, we have decided to end our 12-year marriage,” the couple said in a statement Wednesday to TMZ.com. “The decision was made amicably and with mutual respect toward one another.”
The two had met in Austin, Texas, in March 2003, when a mutual friend introduced them at a dinner. They married on July 4, 2004, and had twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace on Nov. 8, 2007. Quaid, 62, also has a son, actor Jack Quaid, 24, with his second wife, Meg Ryan, to whom he was married from 1991 to 2001. He previously was wed to actress P.J. Soles from 1978 to 1983.
Buffington Quaid initially filed for divorce on March 2, 2012, citing irreconcilable differences, but the couple soon reunited. She then filed for legal separation on Oct. 19 of that year, with Dennis Quaid subsequently filing for divorce that Nov. 30. Though the actor’s representative the following March denied rumors that the couple had reconciled, telling E! News, “They are divorcing,” they withdrew the petition by that September.
The couple had suffered a near-tragedy when staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center inadvertently gave their newborn twins an adult dosage of the drug heparin. The infants survived. Quaid sued the drug manufacturer, Baxter Healthcare, citing negligence in the company’s packaging different doses in highly similar vials.
Quaid, whose films include “The Right Stuff” (1983), “The Big Easy” (1986) and the remake of “Footloose” (2011), stars in the upcoming Season 2 of the British series “Fortitude,” airing in the United States on Pivot.
