Richard Gere

Early life and education

Richard Tiffany Gere was born on August 31, 1949, in Philadelphia, the eldest son and second child of homemaker Doris Ann (née Tiffany; 1924–2016) and NMIC insurance agent Homer George Gere (1922–2023). His father originally intended to become a minister. Gere was raised Methodist in Syracuse, New York. His paternal great-grandfather, George Lane Gere (1848–1932), changed the spelling of his surname from "Geer". One of his ancestors, also named George, was an Englishman who came from Heavitree, England, and settled in the Connecticut Colony in 1638. Both of Gere's parents were Mayflower descendants; his ancestors include Pilgrims such as John Billington, William Brewster, Francis Eaton, Francis Cooke, Degory Priest, George Soule and Richard Warren.

Gere graduated from North Syracuse Central High School in 1967, where he had excelled at gymnastics and music and played the trumpet. He then attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a gymnastics scholarship, studying philosophy. He left after two years and never graduated.

Career

Gere first worked professionally at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod in 1969, where he starred in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. His first major acting role was in the 1971 rock opera Soon, written by Scott Fagan and Joe Kookoolis, which opened on Broadway at the Ritz Theatre and closed after three performances. Following that, he appeared in the original London stage version of Grease, in 1973. Gere was one of the first notable Hollywood actors to play a homosexual character, starring as a gay Holocaust victim in the 1979 Broadway production of Bent, for which he earned a Theatre World Award.

Gere began appearing in Hollywood films in the mid-1970s. Originally cast in a starring role in The Lords of Flatbush (1974), he was replaced after fighting with his co-star Sylvester Stallone. Gere played a small but significant part in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and starred in director Terrence Malick's well-reviewed drama Days of Heaven (1978). The crime drama American Gigolo (1980) significantly boosted his profile and the romantic drama An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) (co-starring Debra Winger) cemented Gere's ascent to stardom, grossing almost $130 million and winning two Academy Awards out of six nominations; Gere himself received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. For the remainder of the 1980s, Gere appeared in films of varying critical and commercial reception. His career rebounded with the releases of Internal Affairs (1990) and Pretty Woman (1990), the latter of which earned Gere his second Golden Globe Award nomination. The 1990s saw Gere star in successful films including Sommersby (1993) (opposite Jodie Foster), Primal Fear (1996) and Runaway Bride (1999) (which reunited him with his Pretty Woman co-star Julia Roberts). He also took a leading role in the action thriller The Jackal (1997), playing former IRA militant Declan Mulqueen; Gere affected an Irish accent for the role. In the same year, Gere had another lead role, playing innocent American businessman in the controversial legal thriller film Red Corner.

Gere was named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1999. Not long thereafter, all in the same year, he appeared in the hit films The Mothman Prophecies (2002), Unfaithful (2002), and the Academy Award-winning musical film adaptation Chicago (2002), for which Gere won his first Golden Globe Award. His ballroom dancing drama Shall We Dance? (2004) was also a solid performer that grossed $170 million worldwide. His next film, the book-to-screen adaptation Bee Season (2005), was a commercial failure. Gere went on to co-star with Jesse Eisenberg and Terrence Howard in The Hunting Party (2007), a thriller in which he played a journalist in Bosnia. He next appeared with Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Cate Blanchett in Todd Haynes' semi-biographical film about Bob Dylan, I'm Not There (2007); Gere was one of six actors to portray a variation of Dylan. He co-starred with Diane Lane in the romantic drama Nights in Rodanthe (2008). The film was widely panned by critics (making #74 on The Times Worst Films of 2008 list), but grossed over $84 million worldwide. The film is his most recent to have been produced entirely by a major film studio.

Political views and activism

Gere regularly visits Dharamshala, the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile. He is an advocate for human rights in Tibet and is a co-founder of the Tibet House US, creator of the Gere Foundation, and Chairman of the Board of Directors for the International Campaign for Tibet. Because he supports the Tibetan Independence Movement, Gere is permanently banned from entering China. In 2017, Gere stated he believed his advocacy had resulted in him no longer being cast in Hollywood blockbusters so as not to offend the growing Chinese audience for blockbuster films, with China now the second-largest film market in the world.

In 1993, Gere denounced the human rights abuses by the Chinese government while announcing the nominees for best art direction during the 65th Academy Awards. Afterwards he was permanently banned from being a presenter of the Academy Awards.

In September 2007, Gere called for the boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to put pressure on China to make Tibet independent. He starred in a Free Tibet-themed Lancia commercial featuring the Lancia Delta. On June 27, 2011, Gere meditated in Borobudur Temple in Indonesia. He actively supports Survival International, an organization dedicated to protecting the rights and lands of tribal peoples throughout the world.

Gere campaigns for ecological causes and AIDS awareness. He currently serves on the board of directors for Healing the Divide, an organization that supports global initiatives to promote peace, justice and understanding. Gere helped to establish the AIDS Care Home, a residential facility in India for women and children with AIDS, and also supports campaigns for AIDS awareness and education in that country. In 1999, he created the Gere Foundation India Trust to support a variety of humanitarian programs in India.

On April 15, 2007, Gere appeared at an AIDS awareness rally in Jaipur. During a live news conference to promote condom use among truck drivers, he embraced Bollywood superstar Shilpa Shetty, dipped her, and kissed her several times on the cheek. As a result of that gesture, a local court ordered the arrest of Gere and Shetty, finding them in violation of public obscenity laws. Gere has said the controversy was "manufactured by a small hard-line political party". About a month later, a two-judge bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, K. G. Balakrishnan, described the case as "frivolous" and believed that such complaints against celebrities were filed for "cheap publicity" and have brought a bad name to the country. They ruled that Gere would remain free to enter the country.

Personal life

Gere had on-again/off-again relationships with actress Penelope Milford from 1971 to 1978 and painter Sylvia Martins from 1978 to 1986. During those years, he was also sporadically linked to Tuesday Weld, Carole Mallory, Dawn Steel, Loree Rodkin, Barbara Carrera, and Barbra Streisand. It was suggested that Gere had affairs with Priscilla Presley and Kim Basinger in tell-all books by Presley's ex-boyfriend Michael Edwards and Basinger's ex-husband Ron Snyder. Gere has also reportedly dated models Laura Bailey, Tina Chow, Dalila Di Lazzaro, and Padma Lakshmi. He was married to model Cindy Crawford from 1991 to 1995.

In 2002, Gere married model and actress Carey Lowell. They have a son, actor Homer James Jigme Gere, who was born in February 2000 and is named for his grandfathers as well as the Tibetan name "Jigme". In 2013, Gere and Lowell separated. They spent three years in highly contested divorce proceedings in New York County Supreme Court. The case was settled in October 2016. In April 2018, Gere married Spanish activist Alejandra Silva. In August 2018, they announced that they were expecting their first child;

their son was born in February 2019. In April 2020, the birth of their second son was reported.. Gere has three biological children, but has also helped to raise his stepson Albert Friedland, born to Silva in 2012 during her prior marriage.

Gere's interest in Buddhism began when he was in his 20s. He first studied Zen Buddhism under Kyozan Joshu Sasaki. After studying Zen for five or six years, he and Brazilian painter Sylvia Martins traveled in 1978 to Nepal, where Gere met many Tibetan monks and lamas. He met the 14th Dalai Lama in India and became a practicing Tibetan Buddhist (specifically of the Gelugpa school) and an active supporter of the Dalai Lama.

In February 2023, Gere was diagnosed and hospitalized with pneumonia during a family vacation in Nuevo Vallarta in Mexico. His wife said he had fully recovered from his illness.

Gere has often been included on lists of famous vegetarians, but his status as a vegetarian is disputed.

Filmography

Awards and honors

In 1995, Gere was the president of the jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival.

On May 17, 2012, Albanian President Bamir Topi awarded the Medal of Gratitude to Gere with the citation: "With gratitude and honor outstanding personality of the world art, great humanist and activist for the protection of human rights, which unmasked and the American public made known, and further, inhuman crimes, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, in 1999, the Serbian military machine against the Albanian civilian population living in its land." On February 16, 2012, the George Eastman Museum honored Gere with the George Eastman Award for distinguished contribution to the art of film.