Richard Gere

Happy Birthday to Richard Gere! He was born as Richard Tiffany Gere in Philadelphia, P.A., The eldest son and second child of housewife Doris Ann (née Tiffany; 1924–2016) and NMIC insurance agent Homer George Gere (born 1922). His father had originally intended to become a minister. 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 original London stage version of Grease, in 1973. He 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. He had bit roles in Report to the Commissioner (1975) and Baby Blue Marine (1976).


He then played a small but memorable part in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and starred in director Terrence Malick's well-reviewed drama Days of Heaven (1978) he also starred in Bloodbrothers that year. After starring with Vanessa Redgrave in the little seen Yanks (1979), he starred in the crime drama American Gigolo (1980) this 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, including The Honorary Consul (a.k.a. Beyond the Limit) (1983), the remake Breathless (1983), Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984), King David (1985), No Mercy (1986) co-starring Kim Basinger and Sidney Lumet's Power (1986). His career rebounded with the releases of Internal Affairs (1990) and Pretty Woman (1990), the latter of which earned him 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. His other 90's films include Final Analysis (1992) with Kim Basinger again, Intersection (1994) with Sharon Stone, First Knight (1995) with Sean Connery and closing out the decade in Robert Altman's Dr. T & the Women (2000) with Farrah Fawcett, Helen Hunt, Kate Hudson and Shelley Long.


On TV, he was in the acclaimed HBO miniseries And the Band Played On (1993). 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 Unfaithful (2002), the horror film The Mothman Prophecies (2002), and the Academy Award-winning musical film adaptation Chicago (2002), for which he won his first Golden Globe Award. Gere's 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 is his most recent to have been produced entirely by a major film studio. Gere has expressed a belief that his politics regarding China, an important financial resource for major Hollywood studios, have made him unwelcome within Hollywood. He embraced his apparent exile from Hollywood and instead appeared in independent films that garnered some of the best reviews of his career. He was notably singled out for portraying businessman Robert Miller in Arbitrage (2012), earning his fourth Golden Globe Award nomination. His other films in the 2000s and beyond include The Hoax (2006), Amelia (2009) with Hilary Swank, Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009) which has developed a cult following, Brooklyn's Finest (2009) with Ethan Hawke, The Double (2011), The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015) with Maggie Smith and Judi Dench and Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2016) the film saw him portray Norman Oppenheimer, a small-time Jewish fixer. Gere himself described the character as an embodiment of the "sides of us we know are annoying and needy". In 2023 he was in Maybe I Do with Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey, and William H. Macy.


Gere is an accomplished musician, composing and performing the Pretty Woman piano theme and a guitar solo in Runaway Bride. He learned tap dance for his role as lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago, and karate for An Officer and a Gentleman. Because he supports the Tibetan Independence Movement, He is permanently banned from entering China. In 1993, Gere was banned from being an Academy Award presenter after he denounced the Chinese government while announcing the nominees. 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. He 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. It is said that Richard was romantically linked with Tuesday Weld, Priscilla Presley, Barbra Streisand and Kim Basinger. Richard and Cindy Crawford got married December 12, 1991 (they were divorced in 1995). Afterwards, Richard started dating actress Carey Lowell. They had a son, Homer James Jigme Gere, on February 6, 2000. In November 2002, Gere married Carey Lowell, In September 2013, the two separated after 11 years of marriage. They spent three years in highly contested divorce proceedings in New York County Supreme Court. In early April 2018, Gere married Spanish activist Alejandra Silva. In August 2018, they announced that they were expecting their first child. Their son, Alexander, was born in February 2019. In April 2020, the birth of their second son was reported. Despite not being vegetarian, Gere has often been erroneously included on lists of famous vegetarians. Multiple film critics and media outlets have cited Gere as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.