1. Richard Gere began appearing in films in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr Goodbar and a starring role in Days of Heaven.
48 Facts About Richard Gere
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Richard Gere was born in Philadelphia on August 31,1949, the eldest son and second child of homemaker Doris Ann and NMIC insurance agent Homer George Richard Gere.
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In 1967, Richard Gere graduated from North Syracuse Central High School, where he excelled at gymnastics and music and played the trumpet.
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Richard Gere attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a gymnastics scholarship, studying philosophy; after two years, he left and did not graduate.
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Richard 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.
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Richard 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.
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Richard Gere played a small but significant part in Looking for Mr Goodbar and starred in director Terrence Malick's well-reviewed drama Days of Heaven.
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Richard Gere's career rebounded with the releases of Internal Affairs and Pretty Woman, the latter of which earned Gere his second Golden Globe Award nomination.
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Richard Gere took a leading role in the action thriller The Jackal, playing former IRA militant Declan Mulqueen; Gere affected an Irish accent for the role.
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Richard Gere was named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1999.
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Not long thereafter, all in the same year, he appeared in the hit films The Mothman Prophecies, Unfaithful, and the Academy Award-winning musical film adaptation Chicago, for which Richard Gere won his first Golden Globe Award.
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Richard Gere's next film, the book-to-screen adaptation Bee Season, was a commercial failure.
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Richard Gere went on to co-star with Jesse Eisenberg and Terrence Howard in The Hunting Party, a thriller in which he played a journalist in Bosnia.
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Richard Gere next appeared with Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Cate Blanchett in Todd Haynes' semi-biographical film about Bob Dylan, I'm Not There ; Gere was one of six actors to portray a variation of Dylan.
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Richard Gere co-starred with Diane Lane in the romantic drama Nights in Rodanthe.
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Richard Gere has expressed a belief that his politics regarding China, an important financial resource for major Hollywood studios, have made him unwelcome within Hollywood.
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Richard Gere embraced his apparent exile from Hollywood and instead appeared in independent films that garnered some of the best reviews of his career.
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Richard Gere was notably singled out for portraying businessman Robert Miller in Arbitrage, earning his fourth Golden Globe Award nomination.
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Richard Gere had earlier received an award from the 34th Cairo International Film Festival in December 2010.
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Richard Gere made a notable departure from his traditional screen persona with Joseph Cedar's political drama Norman.
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The film saw Richard Gere portray Norman Oppenheimer, a small-time Jewish fixer.
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Richard Gere himself described the character as an embodiment of the "sides of us we know are annoying and needy".
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Richard Gere is an accomplished musician, composing and performing the Pretty Woman piano theme and a guitar solo in Runaway Bride.
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Richard Gere studied tap for three months to shoot half a day of dancing for his role as lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago.
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Richard Gere studied karate for An Officer and a Gentleman.
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Richard Gere 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.
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In 2017, Richard 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.
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In 1993, Richard Gere was banned from being an Academy Award presenter after he denounced the Chinese government while announcing the nominees.
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In September 2007, Richard Gere called for the boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to put pressure on China to make Tibet independent.
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Richard Gere starred in a Free Tibet-themed Lancia commercial featuring the Lancia Delta.
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On June 27,2011, Richard Gere meditated in Borobudur Temple in Indonesia.
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Richard Gere currently serves on the board of directors for Healing the Divide, an organization that supports global initiatives to promote peace, justice and understanding.
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Richard Gere helped to establish the AIDS Care Home, a residential facility in India for women and children with AIDS, and supports campaigns for AIDS awareness and education in that country.
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Richard Gere has said the controversy was "manufactured by a small hard-line political party".
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Richard Gere contributed some of his writing for the book We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, released in October 2009.
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Richard Gere discussed the persecution and loss of land of the Jumma people as an example of a tragic story that repeats itself in different continents of the world, calling attention to the crime against their peaceful culture and how it reflects on humanity's relationship with nature and capacity to survive.
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In 2010, Gere stated that the war in Iraq was not supported by the American people and that the presidency of George W Bush had "bullied" Americans into the decision.
38.
Richard Gere called George W Bush a "very poor president".
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In 2016, Richard Gere endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and donated $2,700 to her campaign.
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In February 2023, Richard Gere was one of the 480 global figures who signed a statement from Freedom House expressing support for Mahsa Amini protesters, urging sanctions on Iranian officials, and calling for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be proscribed as a terror group.
41.
Richard Gere has reportedly dated models Laura Bailey, Tina Chow, Dalila Di Lazzaro, and Padma Lakshmi.
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Richard Gere was married to model Cindy Crawford from 1991 to 1995.
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In November 2002, Richard Gere married model and actress Carey Lowell.
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In early April 2018, Richard Gere married Spanish activist Alejandra Silva.
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Richard Gere then met the 14th Dalai Lama in India and became a practicing Tibetan Buddhist and an active supporter of the Dalai Lama.
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In February 2023, Richard Gere was diagnosed and hospitalized with pneumonia during a family vacation in Nuevo Vallarta in Mexico.
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Richard Gere has often been included on lists of famous vegetarians.
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In 1995, Richard Gere was the president of the jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival.