Richard Gere has proved the glitz and glamour of Hollywood isn’t for everyone.
The actor spoke appeared on The Hollywood Reporter Awards Chatter podcast recently, where he revealed how he has coped living in the spotlight for decades and his subsequent decision to step away from it all.
“I reacted like a wild animal,” the 75-year-old actor admitted on the show.
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The A-lister explained that after the unprecedented success of the 1990 films Internal Affairs and Pretty Woman, he made a “subconscious choice on my part to step back”.
Gere explained to host host Scott Feinberg that he made a decision to take on lower-profile projects.
“I said, ‘Enough. I don’t really like all this attention. … I don’t wanna be looked at.'”
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The Runaway Bride actor also revealed how it felt to rise to fame after pivoting from working in regional theatre and on Broadway to the big bright lights of Hollywood.
Gere’s film debut was in 1977’s Looking for Mr. Goodbar, followed by breakout roles in 1980’s American Gigolo and 1982’s An Officer and a Gentleman.
When he booked a summer theatre job at the Eugene O’Neill Provincetown Playhouse in Boston, Gere remembers “getting that rush of energy, of, ‘This is what I’m going to be doing in my life.’ And feeling like a rocket taking off”.
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“I made some choices – not that I’m ashamed of it – but there were choices not to be in the big game,” he added. “They were to be in a smaller game.”
“I’ve never done anything, like ‘Nah, f— it. I’ll just take the money and walk through this.’
“Even things that I don’t think are very good films, the motivation to do them and the work ethic was the same.”
“I was successful enough in the last three decades that I can afford to do these [smaller films] now,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017.
“I’m not interested in playing the wizened Jedi in your tentpole,” he said.
Gere announced in November that he was moving to Spain with his wife Alejandra Silva and their sons Alexander and James.
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Back in April, the former People’s Sexiest Man Alive winner revealed his plans to relocate during an appearance on the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.
“For Alejandra, it will be wonderful to be closer to her family, her lifelong friends and her culture,” he said.
“My wife is Spanish, and she gave me about seven years here and so we’re going to spend some years in Madrid. Our kids are bilingual, so they’re going to flourish there.”
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Gere is still planning to keep busy, though.
Most recently, he starred in the film Longing with Diane Kruger, the Showtime TV drama The Agency and Oh, Canada, which was just released.
Gere made a huge comeback in the 2023 romantic-comedy Maybe I Do, starring alongside Diane Keaton and Susan Sarandon.
It marked the actor’s first major return to his rom-com acting roots since Shall We Dance in 2004.
In 2017, Gere starred in two small-budget films, Norman and The Dinner. In 2019, he had his first significant television role on the BBC show MotherFatherSon.
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