SHORT TAKES : Quaid Back After Recuperation

Actor Dennis Quaid is back in Hollywood after taking off a year to travel, get engaged and get clean.

“I guess I’m straight all the time. Rather than checking out of the world, I check into the world,” Quaid says in the Dec. 10 issue of US magazine.

“I’m much crazier than I thought. It’s all about how you go through life.”

Of his battle with drugs and alcohol, he says: “You have a very hard, fast-paced life, and there’s a lot of tension and pressure. And, at the end of the day, you find another way to deal with it. Which is to check out with drugs and booze.”

While moviegoers earlier this year saw him in “Postcards From the Edge,” Quaid was traveling in Europe and got engaged to actress Meg Ryan.

Quaid says his next film, “Come See the Paradise,” a movie about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, tells an important story. But he doesn’t expect it will be a box-office smash.

“Certainly everyone would like to do movies that make all the money, but I can’t make that my consideration in choosing a role,” he said.