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Richard Gere
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
The prototypical, dark, handsome leading man, Gere has made a career out of contradiction, appearing in big-budget megahits and shoestring potboilers alike, playing sensitive, generous heroes and coldhearted, ruthless villains with equal aplomb. Born to an artistically inclined family, Gere grew up on a farm outside of Syracuse, New York, where he spent much time writing and playing music. He attended the University of Massachusetts, but dropped out to join a rock 'n' roll commune in Vermont in 1970. His interest in acting eventually led Gere to New York, and he appeared on Broadway in "Grease" before landing his first screen roles, in Report to the Commissioner (1975) and Baby Blue Marine (1976). Gere's stock rose considerably in 1977 based on his riveting supporting role as a violent hustler in Looking for Mr. Goodbar The next year he landed his first starring role in Terrence Malick's elegiac Days of Heaven a lavishly shot epic that earned significant critical praise. Gere then starred in a pair of box-office disappointments, Yanks (1979) and the pretentious American Gigolo (1980), before scoring a major hit opposite Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). This should have led to superstardom, but instead he found himself in a string of bombs that nearly relegated his career to the scrap heap. The misunderstood (and critically savaged) King David (1985), the lackluster No Mercy the sanctimonious Power (both 1986), and the ill-conceived Miles From Home (1988) severely diminished his stature.
Just when he was about to become a Trivial Pursuit question, Gere bounced back in 1990 with the sleeper Internal Affairs in which he played a chillingly corrupt, amoral cop, and the year's biggest hit, Pretty Woman As the wealthy Prince Charming who rescues prostitute Julia Roberts, Gere made feminine hearts pitterpatter and thus immediately shot back into the limelight. Final Analysis (1992), a sleazy but high-profile thriller, cast him as a psychiatrist enmeshed in a murder plot. He then executive produced and starred in Sommersby (1993), as a mystery man returning to his supposed wife after the Civil War, and appeared in Mr. Jones the TV movie And the Band Played On (both 1993), Intersection (1994), and First Knight (1995, as Lancelot). Gere has used his commercial visibility to promote a number of social causes, most notably the plight of the exiled Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama. He was married to model Cindy Crawford. |  |
