DENNIS QUAID SPEAKS OUT ABOUT THE BREAK-UP OF HIS MARRIAGE TO MEG RYAN

Actor Dennis Quaid, 47, has broken his silence on his split from Meg Ryan describing the break-up of their marriage as being “like death”. The couple separated last year in a blaze of publicity following the When Harry Met Sally star’s liaison with Russell Crowe, although Meg has insisted that their relationship was over before she met the Gladiator actor.

Speaking in the American magazine W, Dennis said: “When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. That’s why it is like death.” The actor, who has a nine-year-old son, Jack Henry, with the 39-year-old Sleepless In Seattle actress, added: “Next to losing a child, the break-up of a marriage is the hardest thing to go through. You can stop talking to each other and pretend it never happened, that’s probably the way it would be if we didn’t have a child together.”

According to Dennis, the couple, who met on the set of Inner Space in 1987, became romantically involved a year later and married on Valentine’s Day, 1991, are still on reasonably close terms. “Meg and I still talk. Almost every day. Our relationship is good. We were together for 13 years. We have a child together. She knows me like nobody else,” he said.

Meg – who, in reference to their break-up, once said: “I will never talk about what went down – and neither will Dennis” – is said by friends to now be concentrating on being a mother and actress. Her former husband says he is “not going to reach for another long-term relationship or whatever it is that keeps you from facing what’s really going on.” Instead, he’s “off looking for a new identity – and I think Meg’s doing that, too.”

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