Alejandra Silva
Who was the spouse of Richard Gere between Apr 2018 and Jun 2018?
Richard Gere Richard Tiffany Gere ( IPA : ; born August 31 , 1949 ) is an American actor and producer . He began in films in the 1970s , playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr . Goodbar ( 1977 ) and a starring role in Days of Heaven ( 1978 ) . He came to prominence with his role in the film American Gigolo ( 1980 ) , which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol . He went on to star in many well-received films , including An Officer and a Gentleman ( 1982 ) , The Cotton Club ( 1984 ) , Pretty Woman ( 1990 ) , Sommersby ( 1993 ) , Primal Fear ( 1996 ) , Runaway Bride ( 1999 ) , Im Not There ( 2007 ) , Arbitrage ( 2012 ) and ( 2016 ) . For portraying Billy Flynn in the Academy Award-winning musical Chicago ( 2002 ) , he won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the cast . Early life . Richard Tiffany Gere was born in Philadelphia on August 31 , 1949 , the eldest son and second child of housewife Doris Ann ( née Tiffany ; 19242016 ) and NMIC insurance agent Homer George Gere ( born 1922 ) . His father had originally intended to become a minister . Gere was raised Methodist in Syracuse , New York . His paternal great-grandfather , George Lane Gere ( 1848–1932 ) , changed the spelling of his surname from Geer . One of his ancestors , also named George , was an Englishman who came from Heavitree and settled in the Connecticut Colony in 1638 . Both of Geres parents were Mayflower descendants , and his ancestors include Pilgrims such as John Billington , William Brewster , Francis Eaton , Francis Cooke , Degory Priest , George Soule , and Richard Warren . In 1967 , he graduated from North Syracuse Central High School , where he excelled at gymnastics and music and played the trumpet . He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a gymnastics scholarship , majoring in philosophy ; after two years , he left and did not graduate . Career . Gere first worked professionally at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and the Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod in 1969 , where he starred in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . His first major acting role was in the original London stage version of Grease , in 1973 . He was one of the first notable Hollywood actors to play a homosexual character , starring as a gay Holocaust victim in the 1979 Broadway production of Bent , for which he earned a Theatre World Award . Gere began appearing in Hollywood films in the mid-1970s . Originally cast in a starring role in The Lords of Flatbush ( 1974 ) , he was replaced after fighting with his co-star Sylvester Stallone . He played a small but memorable part in Looking for Mr . Goodbar ( 1977 ) and starred in director Terrence Malicks well-reviewed drama Days of Heaven ( 1978 ) . The crime drama American Gigolo ( 1980 ) significantly boosted his profile and the romantic drama An Officer and a Gentleman ( 1982 ) ( co-starring Debra Winger ) cemented Geres ascent to stardom , grossing almost $130 million and winning two Academy Awards out of six nominations ; Gere himself received his first Golden Globe Award nomination . For the remainder of the 1980s , Gere appeared in films of varying critical and commercial reception . His career rebounded with the releases of Internal Affairs ( 1990 ) and Pretty Woman ( 1990 ) , the latter of which earned him his second Golden Globe Award nomination . The 1990s saw Gere star in successful films including Sommersby ( 1993 ) ( opposite Jodie Foster ) , Primal Fear ( 1996 ) and Runaway Bride ( 1999 ) ( which reunited him with his Pretty Woman co-star Julia Roberts ) . He also took a leading role in the action thriller The Jackal ( 1997 ) , playing former IRA militant Declan Mulqueen ; Gere affected an Irish accent for the role . Gere was named People magazines Sexiest Man Alive in 1999 . Not long thereafter , all in the same year , he appeared in the hit films The Mothman Prophecies ( 2002 ) , Unfaithful ( 2002 ) and the Academy Award-winning musical film adaptation Chicago ( 2002 ) , for which he won his first Golden Globe Award . Geres ballroom dancing drama Shall We Dance ? ( 2004 ) was also a solid performer that grossed $170 million worldwide . His next film , the book-to-screen adaptation Bee Season ( 2005 ) , was a commercial failure . Gere went on to co-star with Jesse Eisenberg and Terrence Howard in The Hunting Party ( 2007 ) , a thriller in which he played a journalist in Bosnia . He next appeared with Christian Bale , Heath Ledger and Cate Blanchett in Todd Haynes semi-biographical film about Bob Dylan , Im Not There ( 2007 ) ; Gere was one of six actors to portray a variation of Dylan . He co-starred with Diane Lane in the romantic drama Nights in Rodanthe ( 2008 ) . The film was widely panned by critics ( making #74 on The Times Worst Films of 2008 list ) , but grossed over $84 million worldwide . The film is his most recent to have been produced entirely by a major film studio . Gere has expressed a belief that his politics regarding China , an important financial resource for major Hollywood studios , have made him unwelcome within Hollywood . He embraced his apparent exile from Hollywood and instead appeared in independent films that garnered some of the best reviews of his career . He was notably singled out for portraying businessman Robert Miller in Arbitrage ( 2012 ) , earning his fourth Golden Globe Award nomination . Among many positive reviews , Peter Travers of Rolling Stone cited Geres performance as too good to ignore and an implosive tour de force . Lou Lumenick of the New York Post further wrote that he gives the best performance of his career . Also in 2012 , he received the Golden Starfish Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Career Achievement Award from the Hollywood Film Awards . He had earlier received an award from the 34th Cairo International Film Festival in December 2010 . Gere made a notable departure from his traditional screen persona with Joseph Cedars political drama ( 2016 ) . The film saw him portray Norman Oppenheimer , a small-time Jewish fixer . Gere himself described the character as an embodiment of the sides of us we know are annoying and needy . His portrayal of Oppenheimer was called consistently , completely fascinating by RogerEbert.com and was singled out as a worthy Academy Award contender by Variety . Gere is an accomplished musician , composing and performing the Pretty Woman piano theme and a guitar solo in Runaway Bride . He learned tap dance for his role as lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago , and karate for An Officer and a Gentleman . Activism and politics . Gere regularly visits Dharamshala , the headquarters of the Tibetan government-in-exile . He is an advocate for human rights in Tibet and is a co-founder of the Tibet House US , creator of the Gere Foundation , and Chairman of the Board of Directors for the International Campaign for Tibet . Because he supports the Tibetan Independence Movement , he is permanently banned from entering China . In 1993 , Gere was banned from being an Academy Award presenter after he denounced the Chinese government while announcing the nominees . In September 2007 , Gere called for the boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to put pressure on China to make Tibet independent . He starred in a Free Tibet-themed Lancia commercial featuring the Lancia Delta . On June 27 , 2011 , Gere meditated in Borobudur Temple , in Indonesia . He actively supports Survival International , an organization dedicated to protecting the rights and lands of tribal peoples throughout the world . Gere campaigns for ecological causes and AIDS awareness . He currently serves on the board of directors for Healing the Divide , an organization that supports global initiatives to promote peace , justice and understanding . He helped to establish the AIDS Care Home , a residential facility in India for women and children with AIDS , and also supports campaigns for AIDS awareness and education in that country . In 1999 , he created the Gere Foundation India Trust to support a variety of humanitarian programs in India . On April 15 , 2007 , Gere appeared at an AIDS awareness rally in Jaipur . During a live news conference to promote condom use among truck drivers , he embraced Bollywood superstar Shilpa Shetty , dipped her , and kissed her several times on the cheek . As a result of that gesture , a local court ordered the arrest of Gere and Shetty , finding them in violation of public obscenity laws . Gere has said the controversy was manufactured by a small hard-line political party . About a month later , a two-judge bench headed by the Chief Justice of India , K . G . Balakrishnan , described the case as frivolous and believed that such complaints against celebrities were filed for cheap publicity and have brought a bad name to the country . They ruled that Gere would remain free to enter the country . Gere contributed some of his writing for the book , We Are One : A Celebration of Tribal Peoples , released in October 2009 . Gere discussed the persecution and loss of land of the Jummas as an example of a tragic story that repeats itself in different continents of the world , calling attention to the crime against their peaceful culture and how it reflects on humankinds own relationship with nature and capacity to survive . The royalties from the sale of the book go to the indigenous rights organization , Survival International . In 2010 , Gere stated that the war in Iraq was not supported by the American people and that the Bush administration had bullied Americans into the decision . He called George W . Bush a very poor president . In a press conference held on the sidelines of the 34th Cairo International Film Festival , he said , Im very sorry about what the U.S . has done in Iraq . This war has been a tragedy for everyone . I hope that the people of Iraq can rebuild their country . In 2016 , Gere endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and donated $2,700 to her campaign . In 2017 , Gere criticized Benjamin Netanyahus policies on the Palestinians and Israels expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank , stating , Settlements are such an absurd provocation and , certainly in the international sense , completely illegal—and they are certainly not part of the program of someone who wants a genuine peace process . Personal life . Gere had on-again/off-again relationships with actress Penelope Milford from 1971 to 1978 , and painter Sylvia Martins to 1978 to 1986 . During those years , he was also sporadically linked with Tuesday Weld , Carole Mallory , Dawn Steel , Loree Rodkin , Diane von Furstenberg , Barbara Carrera , and Barbra Streisand . He was accused of having affairs with Priscilla Presley and Kim Basinger in tell-all books written by Presleys ex-boyfriend Michael Edwards and Basingers ex-husband Ron Snyder . He has also reportedly dated model Laura Bailey , Tina Chow , Dalila Di Lazzaro , and Padma Lakshmi . He was married to model Cindy Crawford from 1991 to 1995 . In November 2002 , Gere married model and actress Carey Lowell . They have a son , Homer James Jigme Gere , who was born in February 2000 and is named for his grandfathers as well as the Tibetan name Jigme . In September 2013 , the two separated after 11 years of marriage . They spent three years in highly contested divorce proceedings in New York County Supreme Court . The case was settled in October 2016 . In early April 2018 , Gere married Spanish activist Alejandra Silva . In August 2018 , they announced that they were expecting their first child . Their son , Alexander , was born in February 2019 . In April 2020 , the birth of their second son was reported . Geres interest in Buddhism began when he was in his 20s . He first studied Zen Buddhism under Kyozan Joshu Sasaki . After having studied Zen for five or six years , he and Brazilian painter Sylvia Martins traveled in 1978 to Nepal , where he met many Tibetan monks and lamas . He then met the 14th Dalai Lama in India and became a practicing Tibetan Buddhist ( specifically of the Gelugpa school ) and an active supporter of the Dalai Lama . Despite not being vegetarian , Gere has often been erroneously included on lists of famous vegetarians . Honors and awards . In 1995 , Gere was the President of the Jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival . On May 17 , 2012 , Albanian President , Bamir Topi awarded the Medal of Gratitude to Gere with the citation : With gratitude and honor outstanding personality of the world art , great humanist and activist for the protection of human rights , which unmasked and the American public made known , and further , inhuman crimes , ethnic cleansing in Kosovo , in 1999 , the Serbian military machine against the Albanian civilian population living in its land . On February 16 , 2012 , the George Eastman Museum honored Gere with the George Eastman Award for distinguished contribution to the art of film . External links . - ( May 23 , 1998 ) - The Gere Foundation - The Druk White Lotus School ( external link ) of which Gere is an Honorary Patron - Melvin McLeod ( 1 May May 1999 ) Richard Gere : My Journey as a Buddhist