Richard Gere My Life In Pictures

He was the ’70s cineaste and ’80s heartthrob who became the most famous actor on the planet with Pretty Woman in 1990. Now, to mark his first foray into TV with gripping psycho-political thriller MotherFatherSon, Richard Gere talks TF through his CV’s highlights…

- Jamie Graham

Days Of Heaven 1978

Terrence Malick’s biblical tale of love and the loss of innocence set in the Texas Panhandle…

“It was my first film. We shot it, and then a year later we shot a little more, and then Terry edited for two years. So it wasn’t my first film that came out, but it was the first that I shot.

“Terry is a brilliant and unique man. Badlands wasn’t embraced at that point. It played a double bill with a horror movie on 42nd Street. I went to my agent after seeing the film. It’s not like I was dying to make movies, but I said, “This is a guy I want to work with.” Badlands is extraordinary – it’s still, maybe, his best movie.

“So we were up in Canada just trying to figure out how to make this movie. We were consciously trying to not do anything that had been done before, though it came out of an American and European tradition of literary filmmaking. Néstor Almendros was shooting it, and he’d had a huge career shooting some of the best European films [My Night With Maud, Claire’s Knee]. Shooting Days Of Heaven, I felt we were doing something special.”

American Gigolo 1980

Gere’s male escort finds his soul exposed when he’s accused of murder…

“Paul [schrader, writer/director] and I have maintained a friendship. I just actually gave him the national board of review award for best original screenplay [for first reformed]. Both of us have gotten through 40 years since American gigolo. Forty years! He’s still writing incredible screenplays, doing great work. I’m dumbfounded that I’m still working and doing things that I enjoy.