Dennis Quaid’s best pal was playing husband to the movie star’s ex when he heard the news THE ROOKIE star’s twins were fighting for their lives.

Actor Brett Cullen has been close with Quaid ever since they both attended college
together in Texas, and he still can’t forget the odd circumstances surrounding how he learned of his friend’s medical emergency at the end of 2007.

The tots, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace, were placed in an intensive care unit in a Los Angeles-area hospital after they were given an accidental drug overdose.

And Cullen will never forget how he heard the news.

He explains, “I was doing The Burning Plain, playing Kim Basinger’s husband, in New Mexico when I got the phone call about what happened to his babies. I was on the set and I had a friend call Dennis and he was in the hospital.”

But Cullen insists something good came out of the crisis – the twins are healthy and Quaid has set up a charity, the Quaid Foundation for Patient Safety, which aids those who have suffered a similar situation to his.

The actor says, “The hospital has also now re-instated this whole new procedure where you have to scan a bar code before using medication in the hospital.

“I just saw Dennis about a week ago and we played golf and he said, ‘Man, it’s so cool that something so great has come out of something so near tragedy.'”