August 20, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Richard Gere, actor and humanitarian, turns 60
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, August 20, Graphic News: ÊHe is one of Hollywood's most reluctant heart-throbs. Despite waiting years for his big break -- he once served Robert de Niro in a restaurant and vowed he'd be as big a star one day -- when Richard Gere finally found fame it put him firmly in the category of sex symbol. From early box office triumphs such as the title role in American Gigolo (1980) and the handsome, uniformed West Point graduate in An Officer and A Gentleman (1982), Gere, at his most successful, has always swept women off their feet. Just last year he was re-united with Diane Lane -- his co-star in Unfaithful (2002) and The Cotton Club (1984) -- for Nights in Rodanthe, a romantic weepie in which Gere's character woos Lane's when they are marooned by the weather in a remote, beachfront hotel. The critics may have moaned, but Gere's female fans ensured the classic "chick flick" stayed high in the DVD charts for months. All this, nearly 20 years after Gere played Prince Charming to Julia Roberts's Cinderella of a call girl in the hugely popular Pretty Woman (1990).
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Gere's argument against what he feels is a demeaning stereotype, is essentially an appeal to be seen as a more rounded and intelligent human being. As far back as 1980 -- when his film career was just taking off -- he was already an established stage actor, winning a Theatre World award that year for his performance as a homosexual inmate of a concentration camp in the Broadway production of Bent. His first love had been music, writing scores for shows at his high school in North Syracuse, New York and excelling at piano, guitar and trumpet. A summer season, in 1969, with a theatre troupe -- the Provincetown Players -- while a philosophy student at Massachusetts University, convinced Gere that acting was for him. By 1973, he was on stage in London's West End starring as Danny in Grease -- the part played by John Travolta in the film version later that decade and which Gere had understudied in New York. Gere himself would show his talent for dance and song on screen in Chicago (2002), where he reportedly spent five months rehearsing his tap scene. Meanwhile, Gere discovered transcendental meditation and, towards the end of the 70s, made the first of his many visits to Tibet. He has studied Buddhism -- at one point learning personally from the Dalai Lama -- and campaigns for cultural freedom for Tibetans throughÊthe foundation that bears his name. 
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Now married to the actress Carey Lowell, Gere became a father for the first time at 50, when their son, Homer, was born. In the 1990s, Gere had a high-profile marriage to supermodel Cindy Crawford, which was subject toÊsuch pressure from the media that the couple once took out a full page advertisement in The Times newspaper to declare their relationship genuine, monogamous and heterosexual. They separated eight months later. Gere and Lowell opened their small, upmarket inn in Westchester,ÊNew York, earlier this year. Its luxury facilities include a "yoga loft". But, even here, the legacy of his lucrative years as one of Hollywood's great hunks, compromises Gere's privacy; a busload of European fansÊrecently invaded the property to catchÊa glimpse of their none-too-thrilled hero.
/ENDS