The kids movie that almost ruined Margaret Qualley’s life

Margaret Qualley's obsession with 'The Parent Trap' made her hope her parents would be inspired to get back together - but instead her mum dated Dennis Quaid.

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(Credits: Sony Pictures Releasing / YouTube Still)

Film » Cutting Room Floor

Wed 5 March 2025 0:30, UK

In recent years, Margaret Qualley’s career has been on a steady rise that hit its biggest heights with her Golden Globe-nominated performance in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. That body horror film broke barriers for the genre and was nominated for ‘Best Picture’ at the 2025 Oscars, and now Qualley seems poised for superstardom.

In truth, perhaps that should have always been expected because she comes from a family that is no stranger to fame. After all, her mother is Four Weddings and a Funeral star Andie MacDowell. Amusingly, though, this proximity to fame actually caused some confusion for the young Qualley in the ’90s, when she became obsessed with a classic family movie – and then found art imitating life in a truly bizarre way.

Qualley was born in 1994 in Montana, and was raised on a ranch there until she was four. At that point, the family moved to North Carolina, and only a year later, her father, Paul Qualley, split from MacDowell. After that, Qualley split time between her mum and dad, who lived only three miles apart for much of her childhood. This proximity didn’t negate all the trauma that came from being a child of divorce, though, and Qualley admitted to longing for her parents to get back together.

This is undoubtedly why Qualley attached so strongly to a 1998 family movie that she saw when she was six years old. When the young girl watched Nancy Meyers’ The Parent Trap and saw twin Lindsay Lohans concocting a scheme to get their parents, played by Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid, back together, it spoke to her on a deeper level than most kids.

When Qualley appeared on The Late Late Show in 2019, she admitted to not-so-subtly bringing The Parent Trap up anytime she was with her parents. “I would kind of continuously be like, ‘Hey, guys, I don’t know if you’ve seen The Parent Trap, but things turned out pretty great for them, right? I know you guys got divorced, but have you seen The Parent Trap? They all are really happy at the end! What do you guys think?'”

However, Qualley didn’t live in a world like most little girls, so when her mum brought home a date not long after she convinced her to watch The Parent Trap, Qualley’s jaw almost hit the floor. You see, MacDowell had started dating Quaid, who Qualley only knew as the dad from the movie. She chuckled, “I thought I was magic and that I’d willed the wrong thing into existence.”

Instead of convincing her mum and dad to give their marriage another go, the little girl was convinced her mother had instead thought she meant, “Date the guy from the film.” So, when Quaid entered her home wearing red leather trousers and seemingly trying to replace her father, she thought her life had been ruined. “I was just so thrown,” Qualley confessed. “I said, ‘Your pants are stupid,’ and then I never talked to him ever again.”

Ultimately, Qualley wasn’t magic, and her life wasn’t ruined when Quaid dated her mum for a year. However, the story does have another twist. You see, Qualley couldn’t keep her promise of never speaking to the Innerspace star again – because he co-starred with her in The Substance, more than 20 years after meeting her as a child. Weird.

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