It’s not exactly a secret that there’s been a lot of cocaine use in Hollywood over the years, but one famous leading man has blown the lid off how prevalent it really was!

At 57, Dennis Quaid is playing the loving dad of a teen who lost her arm to a shark attack in “Soul Surfer,” but earlier in his career, he was know for grittier roles as well as bad behavior. Quaid told Newsweek that he started using cocaine after coming to L.A. in search of stardom in the mid-seventies and was soon addicted.

His coke habit didn’t get in the way of his film roles, since so many of his co-workers were also using it. “Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised. It was petty cash, you know? It was supplied, basically, on movie sets because everyone was doing it. People would make deals. Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line.”

By the time Quaid was starring in the classic hit “The Big Easy,” he was so wired he got by on practically no sleep. “I had a reputation for being a ‘bad boy,’ which seemed like a good thing, but basically I just had my head stuck up my ass. I’d wake up, snort a line, and swear I wasn’t going to do it again that day. But then 4 o’clock rolled around, and I’d be right back down the same road like a little squirrel on one of those treadmills.”

Yeah, we’ve heard that story before, but at least Quaid was one of the smart ones who kicked the habit.