Richard Gere: Shifting Geres

Hollywood's most devoted follower of Tibetan Buddhism talks about his two new movies, Red Corner and The Jackal, explains why he can't possibly take interviews seriously, tells how he evaded the Vietnam draft, slams President Clinton, and reveals why he gave up cocaine.

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Forty-eight-year-old Richard Gere is a guy from upstate New York who came from a normal, middle-class family, won a gymnastic scholarship to the University of Massachusetts, dropped out of college after two years to become an actor, performed onstage for a few years, then moved into films and became a star. He dazzled us in Looking for Mr. Goodbar in 1977, and followed that with Days of Heaven (1978), Yanks (1979) and American Gigolo (1980). He won the Theatre World-Award for his role as a homosexual prisoner at the Dachau concentration camp in the Broadway play Bent, then made the blockbuster hit An Officer and a Gentleman. After that came a series of unsuccessful efforts--_Breathless_ (1983), The Cotton Club (1984) and King David (1985) among them--which left one wondering if he had lost his appeal. Then Gere played a corrupt police officer to critical acclaim in Mike Figgis's canny thriller Internal Affairs and the tide seemed to change. Everything changed with Pretty Woman; that huge hit put Gere back on top. In the last few years, Gere was praised for his performance in Primal Fear and was also instrumental in getting HBO to do And the Band Played On, dealing with the AIDS crisis.

Gere has been noted for dating beautiful women, on the one hand, and for being a follower of the Dalai Lama on the other. Back in the early '80s, he was introduced to the Dalai Lama and began to study Tibetan Buddhism. At the Academy Awards in '93, he made a plea to the world on behalf of the Tibetans in their struggle against Chinese oppression. He founded the Tibet House in New York and established the Gere Foundation to fund causes and charities he believes in.

Gere apparently has a great deal of energy, since he's able to work all day and talk with me late at night, without taking the time to eat, sip coffee, or even drink a bottle of Evian water. What he does not have energy for is probing into his private life. He's willing to spend the time to promote his films--_Red Corner_ and The Jackal are both out this fall at the same time--and to speak out about the issues that concern him. But when you've got world health, peace and happiness on your mind, you apparently don't want to devote time to gossip about why your marriage with Cindy Crawford didn't work out.

LAWRENCE GROBEL: Will Red Corner annoy the Chinese government?

RICHARD GERE: [Laughs] Oh yeah, of course.

Q: Was it the condemnation of the Chinese judicial system that interested you about the story?

A: It was the first thing that captured my imagination. There's a line in the movie, "I will not be silent anymore." It takes a long time to teach a society to not feel they have to be silent. I'll tell you how effective that closed Chinese system is: we're eight years away from Tienanmen Square. This was a major popular movement, and the situation now is that there are no dissidents left. They were either killed, or they're in jail, or they split.

Q: At 1993's Academy Awards ceremony you called for the end of Chinese oppression of Tibet. What were the ramifications?

A: I'm banned [from the Oscars]. Banished.

Q: If the Academy invited you back to present an award, would you speak out again?

A: Oh yeah. Absolutely. It was a totally positive thing. It made the Tibetans feel so good, that someone would speak about them to the world.

Q: Didn't the Chinese invite you to their Academy Awards?

A: That's true. It's a very bizarre irony. A few months after I was banished I got a call from the Film Institute in China to come and be a part of their Academy Awards, called the Golden Rooster Awards. I thought it was a joke or a lame attempt to intimidate me. I checked it out with the State Department and found out it was real. I said I'd go if I could go to Tibet also. There was a drama back and forth about that, but finally they allowed it. In the end I just showed up, did some press conferences. I said the stuff I've been saying for years about Tibet and China. I saw quite a bit of China and a lot of Tibet, and have not been invited back again. I don't know why they allowed me in that time. Very peculiar.

Q: Have you ever discussed your concerns with President Clinton?

A: I met with the president before he was elected. He was really interested in Tibet and in AIDS, all my issues. China was top priority with him. Based on that I spoke for him at rallies. As soon as he was elected those weren't issues that he cared about. He told the American people that he would make AIDS an A-1 priority, that he would create a Manhattan Project. He didn't do anything.

Q: Who do you have a respect for in politics today?

A: Patrick Moynihan comes to mind. I think he's genuine, and he's always been fighting difficult fights. He's also been very helpful in the Tibetan situation. The presidents? Jimmy Carter was a genuine guy, probably not a great president, but incredibly courageous, much more than Clinton. Carter actually had principles and wasn't afraid to talk about them and try to bring out the best in America.

Q: Have you ever been approached by anyone to run for office?

A: No. [Laughs]

Q: Do you think a practicing Buddhist could ever become president of the U.S.?

A: The way the country is now, practically the only ones who are fit to become president are ex-junkies, actors, musicians--people who have done it all and don't care about it any more and are no longer subject to all this temptation. We have pretty low-level people who end up ruling us.

Q: How skeptical a person are you?

A: I'm a realist, but I think I give people a break much more than I did when I was younger.

Q: You've opposed U.S. involvement in E1 Salvador and the Chinese occupation of Tibet; you've supported the cultural preservation of Tibet, gay-rights causes, and AIDS research. Can you talk about how your consciousness was raised in each of these areas?

A: I had basic skepticism about U.S. governmental policies in the Third World. We have funded extremely right-wing fascist governments--my tax dollars, your tax dollars. When I narrated a documentary on El Salvador called Witness to War, which ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject), I saw firsthand how totally corrupt our embassy system is. I went to an Air Force base in Honduras and they recognized me; I was signing autographs. Next day we go to the embassy in the capital and I said to our ambassador, "The military presence here is very oppressive." And he said, "What military presence?" I mentioned the air base and he said, "We have no air base." I told him I was there, that I had signed autographs, that they took photos of me. He was silent for a while, then said, "We maintain the fiction." I found that at every embassy in that area.

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