Richard Gere, an American actor who is now 72 years old, has been a leading man in Hollywood ever since he first started making appearances in movies in the 1970s. Although he has appeared in a large number of critically acclaimed films over the past few decades, two of his most well-known roles are as Edward Lewis in “Pretty Woman,” where he played a rich playboy from New York who falls in love with a Hollywood prostitute portrayed by Julia Roberts, and as lawyer Billy Flynn in the hit musical “Chicago.” Both of these films were released in the 1990s.

Gere had Golden Globe Prize nominations for both of these performances; however, the award for “Pretty Woman” eluded him, but he was victorious in the competition for “Chicago” in 2003, earning the award for Best Actor.

Gere is not as well known in Hollywood as he used to be, but there is no question that he has left a significant imprint on the city of Hollywood. Despite the fact that he is not as visible in the industry as he once was, Gere has made a significant contribution to Hollywood.

Additionally, in addition to the appreciation for his extensive catalogue of films that have garnered critical acclaim, the actor has always been a vocal advocate for many causes. He has been vocal in public against the breaches of human rights that are taking place in Tibet, and he skipped the Beijing Olympics in 2008. In addition to this, the President of Albania awarded him the Medal of Gratitude in 2012 for the work he did uncovering the cover-up of the ethnic cleansing that took place in Kosovo in 1999. He was given this distinction in recognition of his efforts.

In spite of the fact that he has spent his whole career portraying leading men in dramatic roles, Gere has, for the most part, managed to avoid drama in his personal life. He has shown that he is a trustworthy individual who is not hesitant to stand out for the causes in which he believes.

Gere has been married to the Spanish publicist Alejandra Silva since 2018, despite the fact that she is 33 years younger than him. But despite the fact that their age difference is nearly three decades, Silva has said that she is not troubled by it. Continue reading to learn more about the nature of their partnership.

Gere started his career in the late 1960s, not long after he left college, where he was attending on a gymnastics scholarship and majoring in philosophy. At the time, he was in his junior year of college. Soon after graduating from college, he began his career in the theater. It wasn’t until he landed the role of Danny Zuko in the original 1973 London stage version of the popular musical “Grease” that he would break through in the industry. He got his start in productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s in both Seattle and Cape Cod. However, it wasn’t until Gere landed the role of Danny Zuko that he would break through in the industry.

Soon after the actor’s triumph in the stage, he made the move to Hollywood, and after making an appearance in the film “American Gigolo” in 1980, his career only began to flourish from there. Throughout the decade of the 1980s and the decade of the 1990s, Richard Gere appeared in some of the finest romantic films of both decades, including “An Officer and a Gentleman,” “Internal Affairs,” and of course, the legendary “Pretty Woman.”

The film “Pretty Woman,” which catapulted Julia Roberts to the forefront of Hollywood, was a significant landmark in the history of popular culture throughout the 1990s. While the actress received a Golden Globe Award and an Oscar nomination for her performance as Vivian Ward, Gere only received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his work in the film. But Gere said in an interview with Today in 2015 that he nearly didn’t participate in the film, and that it was Roberts who ultimately pushed him to do so:

“Whether I’m being really honest, I didn’t know for sure if I was going to be in this movie. She is on the opposite side of the desk, we are getting to know one other, we are flirting with each other and being polite to each other… And at that moment, the director Garry Marshall gives a call and asks, “How’s it going?” And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Sure, yeah,’ as she pulls out a sheet of paper. She flips it over, and then she brings it to me by pushing it. It requested that we reply “Yes, please.” It was really palatable. I pretended to be chatting on the phone and added, “And I was like, I just said yes.”

We have no doubt that Richard Gere is overjoyed that Julia Roberts was successful in persuading him to appear in “Pretty Woman.” At that time, Gere already had two nominations for the Golden Globes under his belt, and he had Hollywood at his disposal. During the 1990s, he had roles in the movies “Primal Fear,” “The Jackal,” and “Runaway Bride,” which brought him back together with Julia Roberts. He ultimately won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in 2002 after starring in the musical “Chicago,” for which he was nominated.

Even though Gere continued to act throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s, his popularity was not even close to what it had been at the height of his career. If you ask the actor, he would explain that there is a clear explanation for it, and it has to do with the fact that beginning in 1993 he has been vocal on a number of problems pertaining to China. Decades later, in 2017, Gere discussed how his activism led to him being rejected by mainstream Hollywood, which ultimately lead him to concentrate on more independent films rather than working in the industry there.

Alongside his illustrious career as an actor, Gere has been a devotee of Tibetan Buddhism for the better part of three decades, which is a fact that may be unknown to some individuals. In the past, he has shared details on his meditation routine, and he even counts the Dalai Lama among his close friends.

Gere’s growing interest in Tibet led him to become more outspoken in his support for the nation and to start openly criticizing China’s presence in Tibet. As a result of this, he decided to make a surprising speech at the Academy Awards in 1993, just before he was about to present the award for Art Direction. In his statement, the actor brought attention to the “awful, horrendous human rights situation that is in China, not just against their own people but also to Tibet.” He said this about the situation in China in general.

The ploy did not please the producer of the awards event, Gil Cates, who was enraged and swore to prohibit Gere from the Oscars in the future. Even though the crowd praised his remarks, Gere was banned from the Oscars in the future.

On the other hand, only a few short years later, in 1997, Gere featured in the film “Red Corner,” in which he portrayed the role of an American lawyer who is falsely convicted of murder in China. After he began to promote the movie, he said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017 that “everyone was satisfied with the picture.” However, later on, he received a phone call from the executives of MGM who informed him that they did not want him to conduct publicity for the movie. He went on to Explain:

“MGM wanted to reach an all-encompassing agreement with the Chinese. They were informed by China that if they released the film, they would not be purchasing it. Because of this, they discarded it.”

The movie did not do well at the box office and was involved in controversy once it was released. Gere’s career has suffered as a direct result of his willingness to stand up for what he thinks is right, as seen by the events described above, which are just a few instances.

In addition to this, he advocated for the cancellation of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008, which resulted in his being permanently expelled from China due to his involvement with the International Campaign for Tibet and The Gere Foundation, both of which he founded. In the same interview with THR, Gere discussed the matter in further detail. He said:

“There are movies that I just can not be in because the Chinese people will tell the producers, ‘Not with him.'” Recently, I had an experience in which someone told me that they could not fund a film with me because they feared it would anger the Chinese.

The Chinese market is a significant one for the entertainment industry, but it seems that the fact that Gere has been open in his criticism of both the nation and its administration has hurt his box office performance there.

Another illustration of this is when Gere shared with THR his experience of getting fired from an indie film that wasn’t even being sponsored by the major studios. He went on to Explain:

“There was something that I was planning to do with a Chinese filmmaker, but two weeks before we were due to start shooting, he phoned and said, ‘Sorry, I can’t do it.’ On a secure connection, we had a private phone conversation. If I had worked with this director, he and his family would never have been permitted to leave the country again, and he would never have worked. If I had worked with this director, I would have been fired.

Gere, despite the fact that he is not welcome at Hollywood award presentations as well as in China, doesn’t seem to be phased by the situation, and he has said that he likes to create independent films nonetheless. In the same interview, he was quoted as saying:

“The studios are intrigued in the idea of earning enormous riches. ” On the other hand, I continue to produce the same kinds of films that I did when I first began out. Brief tales that are engaging on account of their characters and the narratives they tell. It has had no effect whatsoever on the way I live my life.

However, apart from his professional life, Gere has also had a fruitful personal life. Gere has been married a total of three times, and one thing that is consistent across all of his marriages is that there is a significant age gap between him and each of his wives.

Cindy Crawford, who was a supermodel at the time, was Gere’s first wife. The couple was married from 1991 to 1995. Even though Crawford was only 25 years old when they split up, he was 42 years old at the time, and the age gap between them was one of the factors that contributed to their separation. In an interview with People conducted several years later, Crawford discussed some of the reasons why the couple’s relationship was doomed to fail:

“I believe that one of the issues that plagued our relationship was the fact that we were a lot of other things, but I don’t know whether we were ever friends — like peers, since I was young and he was Richard Gere.”

Crawford continued by saying that the two of them deceived ourselves into thinking that they could fly in from different parts of the globe to visit one other when, in reality, they should have spent more time together as a pair and gotten to know one another better. In the end, the stress of maintaining a long-distance relationship affected the health of their marriage.

In 2002, Gere wed his second wife, the model and actress Carey Lowell. At the time of their marriage, he was 53 years old and she was 41 years old. They created a child together and called him Homer. However, things didn’t work out between them in the end, and after 11 years of marriage, they divorced in 2016, after a series of contentious legal fights that are said to have been mostly over finances.

After the couple divorced, Gere began a relationship with his current partner, Alejandra Silva, who became his third wife. Although Silva was in the midst of the divorce process with her first husband when she got associated with Gere, the couple began dating shortly after their initial encounter, which took place in 2014 at a film festival. They made their relationship public for the first time in 2015, one year before they announced their engagement and two years before they tied the knot. Gere was 68 years old at the time, but Silva was just 35, which means that there was a difference of 33 years between their ages. Nevertheless, in spite of this, it seems like the pair is doing rather well in their relationship.

Gere and Silva became parents for the first time in February 2019, to a boy they named Alexander. This is the couple’s first child together. Then, only a little over a year later in April 2020, it was reported that the couple had a second kid together. However, their name is still not known since the pair has been extremely quiet about their children.

Since the beginning of their open relationship, Silva has made it quite obvious that the 33-year age difference between her and her partner does not bother her in the least. According to Closer Weekly’s article, she discussed their link to the Hola! television show. In her words:

“From the minute we laid eyes on one other, our karma was drawn to one another… When there is such a powerful karmic energy, the issues vanish.” “I’m not dismissing our age gap and what it means to be with a Hollywood celebrity; but, when there is such a strong karmic energy, the difficulties evaporate.”

Silva also told Hello! Magazine:

“In this life, it was bound to turn out this way. He has guaranteed me at least twenty more years of happiness! I feel I must admit that he has a great deal more energy than I do; he is much more active. It is challenging for me to keep up with him. He is not a human being!

She also shared some of her thoughts on the reasons why she believes their relationship is successful. She said, “I believe that I provide him with consistency. First and foremost, the fact that I wasn’t an actor or a model was beneficial. She went on to elaborate by saying:

“That was never anything that interested me in the least. The things that have brought us together the most are our devotion to Tibetan culture and Buddhism, as well as our shared goal of assisting those who are in need. And he was able to see my unwavering dedication as a humanitarian, as a person, and as a woman… I’ve never experienced a more delightful or passionate dream than this one. That is why I have made the decision to continue participating in it.

It is reasonable to assume that the pair is still over over heels in love with each other and that they encourage one another in whatever they do. There aren’t many Hollywood love tales like this one, but Gere and Silva make it appear like it’s no big deal.