Dennis Quaid chokes up talking about twins

Scene of the actor in his new film with babies inspires tears

Peter Kramer / AP	Actor Dennis Quaid arrives at the premiere of "Smart People" during the Sundance Film Festival, on Jan. 20. The actor teared up watching a scene that featured him with two healthy babies.

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updated 7:40 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2008

PARK CITY, Utah - Dennis Quaid says his new movie shows “life imitating art.”

The actor, whose newborn twins were given an overdose of blood thinner in November, choked up with emotion at the sight of himself holding two healthy babies in the final shots of “Smart People.”

“It actually really gets me when I see this. I’m a little verklempt,” Quaid said onstage at the movie’s Sundance Film Festival premiere this week. “The character came to have hope for himself but in a sense it came true for me.”

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The twins born to Quaid and his wife Kimberly by a surrogate mother have now recovered from the overdose of heparin administered at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The couple sued the drug maker.

In the film, Quaid plays Lawrence Wetherhold, a schlumpy English professor struggling to get over the death of his wife. He slowly finds happiness with a former student and ER doctor, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, who treated him for a seizure.

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By the conclusion of the romantic comedy, his character is the father of twins.

“Kimberly and I weren’t even pregnant when we shot (the movie). We’d been trying for three years,” Quaid said. “When I read the script a couple years ago, the end scene always got me emotionally. It made me well up. And of course having our own twins now, it really gets me verklempt.”

“It’s a wonderful thing. For me, it’s just life imitating art.”