Richard Gere: Shifting Geres

Q: How would you assess your career?

A: [Long pause] There's so many different roads, so many paths taken. I didn't know at first what I was going to do. I was going to be a musician or I was going to teach philosophy. I was extremely shy, and life was a torture because I was shy. Acting was a good outlet for that, because it got me involved with life, with other people.

Q: Are you shy still?

A: Yeah.

Q: Is acting your chosen way towards enlightenment?

A: It was a beginning, an opening. My reasons for being an actor are quite different now than they were then. It was more of a need then. I don't take it less seriously now, but I'm more interested in the environment of doing the work. There are 150 people on a movie, and that's a lot of energy and an incredible shifting dynamic, and everything that I do affects this dynamic. And I want everyone to be happy. So it's a wonderful opportunity--because we all visualize the movie, and build it, make it happen together. That dynamic is what I enjoy now more than anything else.

Q: Are you happy on the films you've been doing?

A: Yeah. There have only been a couple of films that I've had to grit my teeth to do. Final Analysis I didn't like at all. It pretended to be about codependency between the authoritative figure and the subservient figure, doctor/patient, and an almost Bergman-esque shifting of faces. But the director couldn't do it. We didn't play it. It didn't happen.

Q: You got fired off The Lords of Flatbush early on. What happened?

A: I don't know. It was really devastating. It wasn't very nicely done. An actor's rejection is not like anything else. When an actor gets rejected, it's the whole package--they don't like the way you look, the way you talk, the way you smell. You get it on all levels. It's really hard.

Q: Did it make you cry?

A: Yeah, sure.

Q: Do you cry often?

A: I cry every chance I get.

Q: When you first went to Hollywood, you've said that everyone was doing coke and that it was an aggressive career drug.

A: The quote's a little bit off, but yeah, I used it.

Q: Did it ever become a problem?

A: I wouldn't say a problem. You couldn't do high-level work, like working in the theater, and be doing coke. No way. You just don't have the energy. [But] addiction's never been a problem for me. I liked the high in coke, but I recognized that it was something that ultimately could kill you.

Q: What about other drugs--psychedelics, marijuana?

A: Marijuana was never my thing. I liked mushrooms. But I've been really boring for about 17 years. When I turned 30 I noticed the energy drain. I would do mushrooms now--in a good omelette in Bali.

Q: Did Terrence Malick, your director on Days of Heaven, impress you?

A: I didn't care then about movies. I had an attitude about films that they were for jack-offs who only wanted to make money. But after seeing Badlands I thought, I'd like to work with this guy.

Q: And were you satisfied with Days of Heaven?

A: It was a difficult shoot. We were all very young, green. It was extremely cold weather--Alberta, Canada. I can't say it was the happiest experience I ever had. We did feel that we were doing something special, that it was original and maybe important.

Q: How significant was Looking for Mr. Goodbar for you?

A: It was just another acting role. I was doing theater. I'd done Days of Heaven and there were rumors around that this kid could act and I was offered this job. It was a great job. I was nobody then and Diane Keaton was very generous in calling me after seeing a screening and saying, "You were terrific in the film. You're going to be happy with it."

Q: American Gigolo was threatening to many men who saw it, wasn't it?

A: It was peculiar that it could strike a nerve like that. The best sense that I could make of it was that I was playing the female role--normally that character is played by a woman. What was threatening was that here was a guy who could fuck your wife and your girlfriend.

Q: Did a pissed-off truck driver try to run you off the road after seeing you in that movie?

A: I can't remember the details now, but I don't even think he recognized me. He just saw a guy in a convertible and was pissed. I doubt he knew I was the guy in the movie.

Q: Was Internal Affairs, like American Gigolo, also threatening to men?

A: I do remember driving cross-country in some rednecky part of the country, and I went into a hardware store and a guy came up to me incensed. And I said, "Man, I'm an actor. It was the character, not me."

Q: You were surprised that reviewers didn't pick up on the fact that this was a very homoerotic movie. Why did you think it was?

A: It was really obvious when I saw the film, the dynamic of men. Women were there, but they seemed to be very peripheral. The real animus was between guys. In many ways it was sensual, tactile, the way locker rooms are tactile. But because this was about life and death it took on an erotic tone. We didn't intend to make that, but when you look at the film, that's what the images are telling us.

Q: What's the strangest role you've ever been asked to play?

A: One I did on Broadway, an Alan Bennett play called Habeas Corpus. I played a cockney tit-fitter. I fit these falsies that had been sent away for by Jean March. She was flat, and her sister was Rachel Roberts who had this wonderful set of breasts. So I come to the door, and Rachel Roberts answers it, and I assume these magnificent breasts are the ones she sent away for and I started adjusting them. We had this crazy slapstick couple of scenes. It was great fun.

Q: How much fun was An Officer and a Gentleman?

A: The first thing I think of is that [Akira] Kurosawa said it was one of his 10 favorite films. [Laughs] Bernardo Bertolucci said to me, "You know, Richard, I like the movie very much. But it's very fascist." "What do you mean?" I asked. He said, "The ending, when the army comes in the factory and the workers applaud."

Q: And you were the "army."

A: Right. [Laughs]

Q: Did you reject that role four times?

A: Probably.

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