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Richard Gere on taking the role in American Gigolo: “There’s kind of a gay thing that’s flirting through it”
Good grief, is there anything more sexy than Richard Gere in American Gigolo?
The 1980 flick has Gere playing a male escort in Los Angeles whose job supports his expensive taste in cars, stereophonic equipment, cocaine and clothes.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the now 63-year-old actor says he was only given a day to decide whether he wanted to take the part which involved full frontal nudity.
Director ‘Paul [Schrader] came to see me in Malibu and said, “You’ve got to say yes to this by tomorrow at the latest,” Gere recalled.
‘I read it and I thought, “This is a character I don’t know very well. I don’t own a suit. He speaks languages; I don’t speak any languages. There’s kind of a gay thing that’s flirting through it and I didn’t know the gay community at all.”
‘I wanted to immerse myself in all of that and I had literally two weeks. So I just dove in. If I recall, [the nudity] wasn’t in the script. It was just in the natural process of making the movie. I certainly felt vulnerable, but I think it’s different for men than women.’
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Robert Hawk says:
Well, I think Gere is being a bit disingenuous about not knowing the gay community “at all.” In the early ’70s he made his Broadway debut in a short-lived musical with Peter Allen (and book by Martin Duberman), then he was both understudy and replacement for a number of roles in the long run of “Grease” (which was not exactly super straight backstage). And by 1979 he had one of the leads in “Bent” on Broadway. And he has a gay brother (with whom he used to go to the movies at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre). I love this talented guy, and what he stands for and has stood up for. I’m just sayin’ . . .