The unmade Richard Gere movie that almost caused an international incident
There was a moment in time when Richard Gere was untouchable. He was one of Hollywood’s most reliable leading men, an instant sign that whatever movie he was in was going to be steamy and going to be good. For many, he is still the archetypal romantic actor, thanks to films like An Officer and a Gentleman, Runaway Bride, and Pretty Woman.
However, in the mid-to-late 2000s, Gere’s career began to slow down. If you ask the man himself, it’s because of his views on Tibet. He became a passionate defender of the region, which has long been at loggerheads with China over its sovereignty, and a firm friend of its exiled leader, the Dalai Lama. Since Chinese money is everywhere in Hollywood, the actor believes this is why his major studio work dried up.
Gere himself is permanently banned from entering China, and even working alongside him can threaten a person’s relationship with the country. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the American Gigolo star told a story about a film he was going to make with a Chinese director. “Two weeks before we were going to shoot, he called saying, ‘Sorry, I can’t do it,’” he said. “We had a secret phone call on a protected line. If I had worked with this director, he, his family would never have been allowed to leave the country ever again, and he would never work.”
Neither the director nor the film in question are named for obvious reasons, but incidents like this betray just how interlinked the worlds of entertainment and politics really are. Gere’s first brush with pro-China censorship came at the 1993 Oscars, where he was presenting the award for ‘Best Art Direction’. He went off-script to call out the Chinese government for their human rights abuses in Tibet, and his career was never the same again. “There are definitely movies that I can’t be in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him,’” he revealed. “I recently had an episode where someone said they could not finance a film with me because it would upset the Chinese.”
Rather fittingly for a noted Buddhist, Gere’s actions seem to have earned him some good karma. Ever since he was forced out of the Hollywood scene, he’s taken on more and more interesting roles and, as a result, gotten some of the best reviews of his career. Take 2016’s Norman, for example, in which he plays a fixer who becomes involved with the President of Israel, regarded by many as one of his strongest performances.
In the Hollywood Reporter piece, Gere admitted to actually enjoying some elements of being on the blacklist. “I didn’t have to put on a tuxedo again. I was fine with that,” he said of his alleged Oscar ban following his 1993 speech. When it comes to the topic of major studio roles, he isn’t that bothered with them either. “I’m not interested in playing the wizened Jedi in your tentpole,” he firmly stated. “I was successful enough in the last three decades that I can afford to do these [smaller films] now.”
In 2024, Gere appeared in two movies. One was Longing, a remake of an Israeli film where he played opposite Diane Kruger, and the other was Oh, Canada, a Paul Schrader movie also starring Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi.
