The Richard Gere role Al Pacino turned down, and the Al Pacino role Richard Gere should have played
Al Pacino and Richard Gere have never been in a film together. Isn’t that strange?
Two of the biggest movie stars of all time, both of whom have enjoyed long and fruitful careers at the very top of the industry, who embody a certain Hollywood quality that many feel is missing from the modern scene. The actors and directors they have both worked with are numerous, and yet, they’ve never crossed over directly.
However, when you’re moving in the same circles for such a long period of time, there are bound to be near misses. In an interview with The Independent looking back over his remarkable career, Pacino was asked about some of the many roles he’d turned down. One of them was an opportunity to work with the great Terrence Malick, a decision the great man still regrets.
“Terry, a long time ago, asked me to be in a movie,” he said. “I always wish, there is another one of my mistakes, there is a museum of mistakes, all the movies I rejected.” That film was Days of Heaven, Malick’s second feature film.
When Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and John Travolta were all passed over for the role of Bill, a man seeking his fortune in the Texas Panhandle, the director was forced to take a chance on a relative unknown. You’ll never guess what his name was.
Gere had only just broken through with a supporting role in the 1977 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar. This was his first major appearance, as he played opposite Brooke Adams in this story of ambition, deceit, and the corruption of the American dream. The film received decent reviews at the time, but is now considered a diehard classic. It established Gere as a leading man and set him on the path to worldwide glory.
Two years later, Pacino got his revenge. In 1980, director William Friedkin released the film Cruising. It follows a serial killer stalking the gay community of New York in the late 1970s. The main character is a straight police officer named Steve Burns who goes undercover in the leather scene. The role of Burns eventually went to Pacino, but you’ll never guess who Friedkin initially had in mind.
“I wanted Richard Gere for the role,” he told The Wrap. Friedkin believed that the Pretty Woman star’s looks were better suited to subject material, as he was more ‘androgynous’. Despite both sides being interested, Pacino was eventually chosen. This decision would come back to bite Friedkin hard. “He gave me a rough time for reasons other than the normal actor-director relationship,” he said of Pacino. “He wasn’t on time and often didn’t know what we were doing on a particular day.”
Cruising would go on to have a very different legacy than Days of Heaven. It was dogged with claims of homophobia without its production, with gay rights groups protesting the film’s apparent demonisation of queer culture. Even Pacino would distance himself from it. It has a slightly better reputation these days, but it marks a fascinating period of its star’s career.
