Dennis Quaid talks about filming new 'Reagan' movie at Reagan library event

Air Force One from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum has landed on the big screen in the new movie “Reagan.”

Dennis Quaid, who stars as President Reagan, sits in the plane with Penelope Ann Miller, playing first lady Nancy Reagan, in an interior scene filmed at the Simi Valley museum’s Air Force One Pavilion. It's the actual plane Reagan used during his presidency.

“It was eerie. I even wore Reagan’s actual jacket,” Quaid told moderator David Trulio, president and CEO of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, during a panel Thursday evening before several hundred people at the library's auditorium. Others who worked on the film, which opens in theaters Aug. 30, joined Quaid on stage.

The movie was produced by MJM Entertainment and distributed by ShowBiz Direct.

In addition to the Air Force One experience, Quaid noted he encountered a surrealistic feeling when he and Miller re-enacted the couple’s conversations at Rancho del Cielo, Reagan's ranch about 30 miles northwest of Santa Barbara.

“We went to the Reagan ranch and drove up 5 miles of the worst roads in California,” said Quaid, a Nashville actor and singer, making the audience laugh.

Quaid said once he got to the location with its modest 1,100 square-foot house, he felt a sense of who the Republican president and former movie actor was as a human being.

“He was a humble person,” Quaid said.

Quaid, who voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984, said he felt some fear about playing his favorite president, whom he respected for his principles.

“I don’t look like him. I don’t sound like him. And he’s like Muhammad Ali. He’s known around the world,” Quaid said.

“It took me a while to say yes," he said.

Quaid said he found YouTube footage that reminded him of Reagan’s mannerisms, although he focused more on showing what made him tick than doing an impersonation.

During an interview before the panel, the Houston native said he found “Reagan” surpassed what had been the favorite movie of his career, the 1983 film “The Right Stuff,” in which he played Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper.

Thursday's panel featured several clips from the new movie, including one in which Reagan gets a visit in the hospital from Democratic House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill Jr. after the 1981 assassination attempt.

The political rivals were great friends and knew how to compromise, something that’s needed again in today’s more divisive politics, Quaid said.

The movie also includes scenes such as the president calling on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall during a speech at the Brandenburg Gate.

“We were as historically accurate as we could possibly be,” Quaid said before the panel discussion. “One of the only historical inaccuracies was my little bulldog, Peaches, played the family dog. Reagan did not have a bulldog.”

Dave Mason covers East County for the Ventura County Star. He can be reached at dave.mason@vcstar.com or 805-437-0232.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Dennis Quaid talks about filming new 'Reagan' movie at Reagan library event