Richard Gere wrote Pretty Woman's piano theme but never earned an Oscar nomination
Richard Gere composed and played the piano theme in Pretty Woman, learned tap for three months to film half a day of dancing in Chicago, and studied karate for An Officer and a Gentleman. Critics routinely rank him among the finest actors never nominated for an Academy Award.
Gere was born in Philadelphia on August 31, 1949, the eldest son of a homemaker and an insurance agent who had once meant to become a minister, and he grew up Methodist in Syracuse, New York. Both parents traced their lines to the Mayflower, and a great-grandfather changed the family spelling from Geer. At North Syracuse Central High he shone at gymnastics and trumpet, and a gymnastics scholarship took him to the University of Massachusetts Amherst to study philosophy. He left after two years without a degree.
The stage came first. He worked at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Provincetown Playhouse in 1969, landed on Broadway in a 1971 rock opera, Soon, that lasted three performances, and joined the original London cast of Grease in 1973. In 1979 he played a gay Holocaust victim in Bent on Broadway, winning a Theatre World Award and becoming one of the first well-known Hollywood actors to take such a part. His film start was bumpy: he lost a lead in The Lords of Flatbush after clashing with Sylvester Stallone.
American Gigolo (1980) made him a leading man and a sex symbol, and An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) grossed almost $130 million. Internal Affairs and Pretty Woman revived him in 1990, People named him its Sexiest Man Alive in 1999, and playing the lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago (2002) won him a Golden Globe. Shall We Dance? (2004) took $170 million worldwide.
Away from the set, Gere co-founded Tibet House US and chairs the board of the International Campaign for Tibet. Criticising China's government from the stage of the 1993 Academy Awards got him barred from ever presenting again, and China has banned him from entering. He has said this advocacy cost him blockbuster roles, and he turned to independent films instead; Arbitrage (2012) brought his fourth Golden Globe nomination, and Norman (2016) cast him as a needy small-time Jewish fixer.
Source: Richard Gere
