When Richard Gere wasn’t allowed to mimic Christian Bale: “I couldn’t let him go that far”
To say Richard Gere was something of a sex symbol in the 1980s would be a bit like saying Nutella is ‘quite tasty’ or that Elon Musk has got a few spare quid in the bank. It doesn’t do it justice at all. Once he had been in An Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, he became the de facto housewives’ choice across the globe, picking up from Robert Redford in the 1970s.
That role also inspired pretty much every Chippendales routine ever since, the whole ‘scooping up a lady while in naval uniform before she takes his hat off and puts it on her head’ passing into male stripper folklore forever. But Gere had actually knocked on the door of the public’s sexy psyche two years previously with his performance in the steamy Paul Schrader movie American Gigolo.
The story of a high-end male escort in Los Angeles who gets involved with a politician’s wife, it was a film that caused quite a stir back in the day due to Gere going full frontal, but has proved hugely influential, summing up the early part of the decade stylistically and set to a synth-fuelled Giorgio Moroder soundtrack.
Although John Travolta was originally announced in the lead role, it eventually went to Gere, who used the success of the movie to shift his career into full-on leading man mode, with An Officer and a Gentleman two years later. That movie was a huge hit and was nominated for four Oscars, cementing Gere as a bankable star. But he struggled to land another major release until the end of the decade when he was superb in the bent-cop thriller Internal Affairs and then went stratospheric thanks to Pretty Woman.
If he wasn’t already lusted after enough, that 1990 romantic comedy with Julia Roberts ensured that the silver fox would be forever more, as the movie broke records, recouping almost half a billion dollars against a budget of just $15million and earning Gere a Golden Globe nomination, plus an Oscar nomination for Roberts. Gere would finally pick up a Golden Globe win thanks to 2002’s musical Chicago.
Late in his career, 2024 in fact, Gere teamed up once more with his American Gigolo director Schrader for the drama Oh, Canada, in which Gere played a dying filmmaker looking back on his long career with some regret, using an interview as a confessional. Featuring a central character dying of cancer meant that Schrader had to focus on the dilapidation of Gere’s protagonist, and according to the director, Gere wanted to go as far as possible in the pursuit of realism.
According to Schrader, “He (Gere) wanted to do a Christian Bale (who lost 62 pounds for his lead role in 2004’s The Machinist), He wanted to look like a skeleton. But I wanted to show him in scenes where he was younger, so I couldn’t let him go that far.” The film, which marked 44 years since Gere and Schrader first worked together, received fairly positive reviews on release, with Gere’s committed performance attracting praise.
Most recently Gere has been seen in the CIA drama The Agency alongside Michael Fassbender, playing Bosko, the head of the London branch. A second season of the show was announced earlier this year and should hit screens by the end of 2025.
