From The Straits Times    |

Richard Gere is having a bit of a moment.

His performance in the movie Arbitrage has earned him glowing reviews and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, with talk of a similar nod from the Oscars next. All this coming years after many thought the 63-year-old had retired his A-list leading-man status.

Richard Gere is a happy daddy
In his latest film Arbitrage, Richard Gere is crooked billionaire Robert Miller married to Ellen, played by Susan Sarandon (above). — PHOTOS: SHAW ORGANISATION, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Speaking to the press when the movie opened in the United States earlier this year, he appeared unmoved by all the hype.

The actor saunters into a press event at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons just as the movie’s director, Nicholas Jarecki, is finishing up his own chat with Life! and a group of other reporters.

Jarecki, a 33-year-old first-time director, excitedly relays the film’s opening-weekend numbers. But it is a damp squib as Gere responds to this promise of success with a phlegmatic “yeah, guess you’re going to have to deal with it”.

As he leans against the table, his tucked-out, open-collared shirt and wavy silver hair make the besuited young director, and indeed everyone else in the room, seem suddenly overdressed.

Everything slows right down as the soft-spoken, contemplative actor turns his interview into something of a spiritual therapy session, the kind one emerges from feeling sleepy and smelling of incense.

Little of what he says has anything remotely to do with the movie, which opens in Singapore today.

In it, Gere plays a charming but morally compromised financial tycoon trying to extricate himself from the fraud he has committed in his professional and personal lives.

“I think that’s the alpha energy of these guys,” he says of the top financial wheeler-dealers whom his character is modelled on. “For sure, it’s a boys’ club. Not many women are in that club of powerful, rich people.”

He says he drew inspiration from former US president Bill Clinton to construct the character. “In the end, it’s not really about the financial system. It’s about people, and if the movie works, it’s because of that.

“To play this guy as a villain was of no interest to me. Of course, he does what he does in the movie, but to understand the human being who makes those decisions, although you might not agree with them, allows us to mirror ourselves into the situation. That was my purpose.”

The actor himself appears not to have become corrupted by fame, power and money – something he attributes to his “very different upbringing”.

“I had an extraordinary father. We grew up on a dairy farm milking cows and I’ve never forgotten that.”

It would be understandable if he did forget, though. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Gere was the toast of Hollywood, his sex appeal helping to turn films such as Pretty Woman (1990), Runaway Bride (1999), An Officer And A Gentleman (1982) and American Gigolo (1980) into box-office gold.

His 1991-1995 marriage to supermodel Cindy Crawford seemed to cement this status. The attractive pair was even crowned People Magazine’s Sexiest Couple in 1993 and Gere would make it to the list again a few years later as the Sexiest Man.

One of Hollywood’s most high profile Buddhists, the actor also frequently found himself in the spotlight because of his vocal support for the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile.

Today, his life is quieter and more family- focused. He married again in 2002 and has a 13-year-old son with former actress and model Carey Lowell. “I’m more careful about wasting time,” he says of his acting career these days. “I love my son and my wife. I don’t want to take away time from them doing something frivolous.”

His daily routine now revolves around son Homer. “Every day, I take him to the bus. We wait for the bus, we talk there, he comes home, I bring him home, we play some basketball or catch or talk about things, I help with the homework.”

While he says it is not his “style” to actively impart life lessons to the boy, he quotes the Dalai Lama’s advice to a friend who was about to become a father.

“He said: ‘Teach them to value the life of an insect.’ Most kids would step on an ant, but for a child to see something that you could label as ugly, small and see that it has a life force, that it feels pain and hunger, those are good lessons for a child.”

He goes on to wax philosophical about the power of negative thoughts, speaking in a low, hypnotic voice that appears to have lulled most of the reporters at the table into a stupor, for almost no one is quizzing him about the film anymore.

How does he balance his career and humanitarianism, one asks instead. “Water finds its own level,” Gere replies.

“I don’t need a lot. I don’t need any more Tibetan art, I don’t need another house, I don’t need another car. It’s done,” he says, munching contemplatively on a bowl of almonds someone has brought him.

“I think the maturation process in any of us as we get older is that the more superficial drives we have – whether it’s to do with sex, money, power or anything else – tend to go away and transform.”

The only “power” that he feels matters in his life is what he has learnt from those wiser than him, he says. “I channel my teachers. I’m a student with very good teachers – that’s my power.”

This story was first published in The Straits Times on Thursday, December 27, 2012. Visit sph.straitstimes.com/archive/sunday/premium to read similar stories. Please note: You will not be able to access this section of The Straits Times website unless you are a subscriber. To subscribe to The Straits Times website, go to www.sphsubscription.com.sg/eshop.