 "First Gere"
"Yes, Julia Roberts and I are getting married," announces
Richard Gere. "It's the one rumour that happens to be completely
true." The star casually drops this bombshell as he walks
into the room - before he's even asked a question - and only his
perfectly straight face and the twinkle in his eye clue you in
on the fact that he's joking about recent stories that he and
Roberts ~now plan to run off together and marry after the breakup
of their respective marriages.
But press him about what's really going on in his private life
these days and the star just shakes his head rather sadly
Poor Richard Gere - if only real life was more like the movies.
In Pretty Woman, he married the hooker and lived happily
ever after. In his new film, the romantic epic First Knight,
the sexy actor stars as Lancelot opposite Sean Connery as
King Arthur and Julia Ormond as the beautiful Guinevere. All ends
well for the nomadic knight when he finally finds a home in Camelot
and true love in the arms of Guinevere.
But in real life, things haven't worked out so happily for the
45-year-old star. Soon after arriving in London last year to make
the film, his highly-publicized three-year marriage to supermodel
Cindy Crawford began to fall apart. Many veteran observers of
the Hollywood mating ritual smelled blood the moment the couple
released their joint statement declaring their heterosexuality
and monogamy, and sure enough, two months later it was all over.
What went wrong? The star carefully sidesteps any direct reference
to his failed marriage and his soon-to-be ex-wife beyond that
the experience hasn't soured him on the idea of marriage.
"Just because marriage didn't work out doesn't mean I'll
never get married again. You just try to be the best you can,"
he sighs. "But I have no interest in talking about it. It's
really nobody else's business."
Still, the rumor mill in Hollywood has been working overtime about
what really caused the fabled couple to crash and burn. One scenario
has it that the star exploded when he found out that Cindy had
been secretly seeing an ex-boyfriend, ex-model and club owner
Rande Gerber. True or not, Gere was soon seen in the company of
22- year-old British model Laura Bailey and has also been linked
with another model, Elizabeth Nottoli.
So how does he feel about such reports? "They always get
it wrong, so it doesn't matter," he laughs. Does it bother
him? "There's nothing I can do about it, so yeah, you learn
after a while that there's really no point in being upset here,
because I can have no effect on it." And indeed, Gere seems
genuinely relaxed as he runs a hand through his salt-and- pepper
hair.
All of this is a far cry from the angry young man persona Gere
presented to the world in general and the media in particular
throughout much of his earlier career. He happily accepts that
he's mellowed considerably both on and off the set in recent years,
although it's taken him a long time to get to that point. "Yeah,
sure, but I've been doing this a long time now and you learn the
lesson eventually," he admits. "I tried not doing anything
- no interviews because I was very shy and didn't want to talk
about myself, just the work. And part of doing the work I thought
was being anonymous, being able to put a mask on and being believable
as that. But once you start doing movies, you're co-opted in many
ways anyhow and you become an icon, and it goes with the territory.
So you start to play with the original energy, the impulse to
create, along with the new energy that comes from being an icon,
and hopefully use the added energy to do even better work."
So does Gere now see a good side to fame and being a movie star
icon? "Ultimately, yes," he agrees. "You have to
find that or you crash and burn."
The actor seems unusually open and candid as he talks about the
price of fame. After all, Gere has acquired quite a reputation
over the years since he first seduced women and audiences everywhere
as the calculating hustler Julian Kaye in American Gigolo.
In fact, Gere seemed to identify with and inhabit his role
so completely as he preened and swaggered and muscled his way
around glamorous homes and lonely women in Beverly Hills and Palm
Springs that many people have had trouble separating the actor
from his image ever since. Intense. Womanizer. Difficult. Aloof.
Temperamental. Moody. These are just some of the names that have
been thrown at Gere since then. It's easy to see why, as Gere
is best known for playing narcissistic, explosive characters with
a bad attitude problem, and he's distinguished himself over the
years in a series of memorably intense roles in such films as
An Officer And A Gentleman, The Cotton Club, Breathless and
No Mercy.
You could say that not much has changed in his brand new film
First Knight, a sweeping epic about love and honor, betrayal
and lust, in which he plays a violent, rootless fighter who clashes
with Connery's King Arthur as they both pursue the same woman.
"Lancelot is like a samurai warrior out there on the road,
fighting for money," he explains. "Then he runs into
this girl who he doesn't know anything about, falls madly in love
with her, and that's when the trouble starts. "Working with
Sean Connery was great and he has this incredible presence that
made him perfect as the King," he continues. "As for
Julia Ormond, I'm a huge fan. She's great, really great. Adult,
smart, very funny, witty, knows her craft I inside out, and very
beautiful." Although there are no steamy sex scenes in First
Knight, Gere and Ormond engage in some passionate kissing.
Suggest that the actress looks like a great kisser and the star,
ever the gentleman, will only concede with a smile, "Not
bad."
Gere has high hopes for First Knight and no wonder. His
last big hit was Pretty Woman, the 1990 blockbuster that
made Julia Roberts a star. Since then there's been a lot of talk
about a sequel, but so far nothing definite has been decided,
says the actor. "It's true Julia and I met to talk about
a sequel," he admits, "and we were given a script. But
I wasn't knocked out by it, so it's still very much up in the
air. I had a meeting and told them what I felt about it and now
they're off rewriting the script, so we'll see what happens. To
be honest, it probably can't be done. Look, if everyone saw the
original and it made an enormous amount of money, you think people
haven't tried to do it since then? You can't do that. You can't
recreate magic. It's hard enough to do it the first time."
Whether the sequel ever happens or not, the star is much in demand
these days, and is currently shooting his next film, Primal
Fear, in Chicago. "I play a hot-shot defense attorney
who takes on this high-profile case defending an altar boy who
has apparently killed an archbishop in Chicago," he explains.
"I take it on for obvious reasons, because it's going to
be a big case, and although all the circumstantial evidence says
he did it, I don't believe he did it. So then I start to get emotionally
involved in a case, when normally I wouldn't at all, it'd just
be the money and notoriety. It's a very tight psychological
courtroom drama."
Talking about his ups and downs in Hollywood, there's no doubt
that the actor is more relaxed about his life and career now,
and he partly credits his longtime interest in Buddhism. "I've
practiced for over 20 years now. I think it accelerates the process
of growing up, and some of us need it more than others,"
he smiles. "And I need it quite a bit, so it's really helped
me." The actor has also had a long standing involvement with
various political causes. As a close friend of the Dalai Lama,
the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, Gere helped found Tibet
House New York, an organization dedicated to the preservation
of that nation's cultural and religious heritage. Coincidentally,
Tibet House is headed by Robert Thurman, Uma's father. The star
makes no secret of the fact that he'd far rather spend time in
India between film projects than hang out on the Hollywood party
scene. "I'm really happy if I do a movie and then go to India
for a few months and travel around," he says. "I like
going back and forth to those completely different worlds. And
anyway, I was never really based in LA. I just went there to work."
So exactly where is home now for the travelling actor? After all,
the lavish Bel Air mansion that Gere and Crawford bought together
is now up or sale - asking price $5 million, and Gere says he's
now selling his other California property - a ranch, reportedly
to help fund his Buddhist causes. "I guess I just feel most
at home in India, in Dharamsala," he says. "And as I
get older I feel I have less and less connection to places like
LA." Gere feels so at home in India, it turns out, that he
has a house - "It's more like a hut, just one small room
and a bathroom, no kitchen" - where he can stay whenever
he visits.
Suggest that it sounds as if he's already turned into a monk and
he laughs. "In some ways I have become a monk already, it's
true. But I'm not celibate, you know, and I love making movies.
Someone asked me if I ever look back fondly on my early, carefree
days, but it's more fun now. I wouldn't go through my 20s again
for anything. No way."
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