Meg split was 'like death' says Quaid

Actor Dennis Quaid today broke his silence on his split with wife Meg Ryan and said it was "like death".

The Hollywood stars’ marriage crumbled last year and Ryan, star of When Harry Met Sally, sought solace with Oscar-winner Russell Crowe.

Today Quaid, 47, with whom Ryan, 39, has a son, nine-year-old Jack, told W magazine he was happy being single, but his break-up with Ryan was traumatic.

"I got through shock. Depression. Anger. All the rest of that stuff," he said.

"When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. That’s why it is like death. It is death.

"Next to losing a child, the break-up of a marriage is the hardest thing to go through. I just sat there and went through it. But I’m glad I did because I think it helped me get over it.

"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 - but we do have a child together.

"You have to sort of swallow it and go on. Things happen. That doesn’t mean that people are bad people. Life happens."

The acting couple married in 1991, on Valentine’s Day, after meeting on the set of Innerspace in 1987, and becoming romantically involved a year later while making DOA.

But their marriage started to founder early last year and in June they separated while Ryan began a high-profile affair with Russell Crowe as they filmed together.

Crowe and Ryan split last Christmas and last month, a friend of the actress told People magazine the actress was now concentrating on being a mother and an actress and planning to stay single.

Quaid said he too planned to stay single and still had a "good" relationship with Ryan.

"Meg and I still talk. Almost every day. Our relationship is good," he said.

"We were together for 13 years, we have a child together. She knows me like nobody else. Why not?

"I’m not going to reach for another long-term relationship - or whatever it is that keeps you from facing what’s really going on.

"I’ve been off looking for that new identity and I think Meg’s doing that, too. We’re both trying to find out, 'Who am I outside of this relationship?'

"I had to learn something about myself. You know, Meg and I are always going to be together - we’ll always be connected. That’s just the way it is. If anything, we can be fuller people. Maybe we’ve become more of ourselves."

And the ex-cocaine addict said despite the agony of the split, he had not returned to his old habit, which he kicked before marrying Ryan.

"When Meg and I split up, I had the wherewithal not to go out and get loaded again," he said.

Instead he had turned to music, hoping to resurrect his other career as a musician which he had hoped to build in the 1980s when he starred in The Commitments.

"

When Meg and I broke up, I hadn’t even played music for, like, six years," he said.

"For one thing I had this connection with music and cocaine - that was what I did when I got loaded: I wrote a song.

"When I quit doing blow, I thought I’d better stay away from music - or maybe it just wasn’t there after a while.

"But once I took it up again, it was like getting back together with an old girlfriend you’ve still got a thing for."