Richard Gere finds himself at that interesting point in his career when he’s not only afforded the opportunity to take on a batch of compelling projects, but he’s also picking up awards for his body of work. However it was one film in particular that earned Gere the ‘Actor of the Year’ prize at the 2007 Hollywood Film Festival: Gere’s starring role in The Hoax. The Hoax is based on the true story of novelist Clifford Irving’s brazen attempt to scam everyone into believing he was intimately working with billionaire recluse Howard Hughes on Hughes’ autobiography.
Prior to the awards ceremony, Gere spoke with the press about his career, awards, and The Hoax.
What are your feelings going into this honor tonight?
“It's funny. I was just talking about this, but I must be getting older because these awards seem to be coming my way. There was a wonderful…I don't know if any of you were in San Sebastian when they gave me an award for lifetime achievement, but it seems to be at this time that people feel it's important to give me these awards. I'm very thankful. It's a good encouragement for me.”
Coming at the same time as the DVD for The Hoax, do you feel like that role is some sort of pinnacle to your career?
“I like The Hoax a lot. I thought that it was a really special movie. Lasse Hallström just did a wonderful job and was working at the top of his abilities. He just did something spectacularly good. I wish that it had done better commercially, but I think that more people will probably see this on DVD than saw in theaters, which is great.”
You've also got The Hunting Party. Did it feel like a special year?
“Yeah, and the Dylan movie, too. It was a kind of interesting year. There's a couple of other movies, two other movies, that haven't even come out yet so it was a kind of bizarre time when there were actually four or five movies that I wanted to make during this period and they were all kind of interesting.”
You and Diane Lane reuniting for Nights in Rodanthe will probably be big at the box office.
“Well, I'll do anything with her. I think that she feels the same about me. But to have a good script and a good director and an adult love story, yeah – there's no reason why these wouldn't touch a lot of people. What we're dealing with in the movie is something that we all have in common.”
In reflecting back on your life and career as they'll do with this award tonight, what do you think is your greatest personal accomplishment and what's your greatest professional accomplishment, in your opinion?
“Personal accomplishment, my marriage and my children for sure, for sure. I mean, anyone here who has kids know that. That's what it is. Everything else, you care about what you do and you want it to have quality, but the best of yourself you give to your family of course.”
And professionally?
“Professionally, I had this really kind of emotional moment for me in San Sebastian, getting the lifetime achievement that they gave me. They were so warm. The Spanish were just incredibly emotional generous with me and embracing to me. But before I went out onstage to get this award, they had a four minute clip of almost all of my films. To see myself from 26 to 58 now – Hunting Party was also in that – was kind of staggering. I never look at my old work and it's hard for me to remember 30 years ago, much less see myself at that time. It was a powerful thing. I thought, 'My God, I've done all those movies?' Actually, most of them I felt pretty good about.”
If there was one particular scene from a film flashed up there and you burst with pride, which film would it be?
“It wasn't like that. It was just the run of all these things. It's hard to pick out one moment in one's life. It's impossible.”
Looking for Mr. Goodbar must have been special though.
“They all are. I work very hard at everything that I do. Even the movies that aren't great and maybe don't work, I work just as hard on those. So they all have that emotional creative memory included with them. There were some of them that felt particularly good and maybe came together easier than some others and people enjoyed in theaters. There's a bit of a special feeling with those.”
Tap dancing in Chicago?
“Chicago was one of those. Chicago was pure fun. We all worked very hard. We had a very short shooting schedule for that and so we had to know that stuff really well before we shot. So there was a lot of rehearsals and a lot of intensity to it, but it was all fun. In the end it was all play. Creativity is usually at its best during play. It still has an element of that kind of joy, childlike joy of just playing. If you put a learned craft over many decades with that kind of joyous sense of fun, you can do something special.”
Do you have a favorite memory of working with Julia Roberts?
“I think it was meeting her probably. I remember very clearly her coming into my office and I think that she'd maybe done Mystic Pizza at that point, just beginning really. You could feel that there was something magical in her.”
Do you have any plans to work with her again?
“No, no. We've done two and they were both successful and so maybe we should just let it go at that.”
Did you get to meet Clifford Irving?
“No. We talked on the phone and we didn't [meet]. Actually, none of us met him before we shot. The producer who had been developing this material talked to him for 15 years, but he also hadn't met him. After the film was finished though, and we were doing the junket actually, that was the first time that I ever spoke to him.”
