«I don’t like stardom, I’m lucky. Salvini? No problem, I could meet him»- Corriere.it

All you need is love. You talk to Richard Gere and it sounds like he sings the Beatles, that song is a worldview. “I’ve never considered myself a superstar, I don’t think much about my career, I’m a normal man. And I was incredibly lucky.” Tomorrow the star will hold a master class for the film students of the Filming Italy Sardegna Festival.

American actors of a certain age seem more loved in Europe than in the USA.

“I don’t know if it’s true. Europe has this beautiful thing, that if you have done wonderful things you are always remembered for that. In America it’s different, people are very generous with me, I would say it’s not about cynicism but about mentality. Americans tell you: ok you did pretty womanbut what will you do tomorrow?».

«I start in July The betrayalsa film by Paul Schrader, which I find again 43 years later American Gigolo, from a novel by Russell Banks, about a documentary filmmaker who is dying of cancer and asks to have his confessions filmed. We will see in Sardinia Meet the in-laws, where I found Susan Sarandon. We’ve known each other since we were teen-agers, after being my wife in so many movies, here is my mistress. And I assure you that here she is really a bad girl ».

Going back to «American Gigolò», what do you remember?

«At the time I was riding a motorbike, in jeans And t-shirt. I had never heard of Giorgio Armani, who dressed my character. After that film I was considered an elegant man, but I didn’t know anything about fashion, before I was an American simpleton».

He will meet Salvini, after the controversy over migrants?

He smiles: «I can meet anyone, I have no problems. A new law in Italy, when Salvini was interior minister, prevented refugees from disembarking. It’s a criminal act. How could this happen in deeply Christian Italy? I asked myself what I could do for the 147 migrants who stayed 19 days on the ship moored in front of Lampedusa in 2019, following the ban on entry by the Italian government. I made the decision to take water and food on a boat of people who were fleeing, who preferred the risk of drowning in the Mediterranean in order not to go home and die, in order to survive. I talked to them, I looked them in the eye, I held their hand, I listened to their stories. Italy has to contend with Africa, Germany with the refugees from the Balkans. Europe has a huge responsibility in the exploitation of hundreds of years. Today, China bears the same faults, a country I cannot enter due to my proximity to Tibet».

Speaking of solidarity, in “The Invisibles” he played a homeless man.

«A profound experience, which changed me as a human being. No one recognized me while I was on the street. It didn’t matter how I felt, in those moments, or if I was uncomfortable. That’s a movie with a little budget, it’s not the genre in which a lot of money is invested, it’s not a Hollywood film, we had an almost documentary approach. The real question is that, in the world, we are all born equal, we have the same opportunities to love. I am 73 years old, I have met millions of people and I have never thought that anyone was different from me, we are all the same, we respond in the same way to the request for love, kindness, honesty”.

And has Buddhism changed it?

«It didn’t change my career, it made me understand how we should relate to others, it gave me spiritual questions: do we have time to think about others? I don’t understand anything about technology, but it seems to me that it is fuel for loneliness and alienation».

We never talk about his adolescence…

“I was shy, played baseball and played trumpet in the band. I belong to the middle class, the money was enough and it wasn’t squandered because it didn’t exist. My parents were from a small town in Pennsylvania, they graduated high school but my father grew up on a farm among cows. He died two months ago, almost 101 years old, he lived with me, I’m still filled with grief for the loss of him. He told me that he was able to love his neighbor, it was his greatest teaching from him ».

«I am the product of what I have combined in life, positive and negative. I hope I have treasured the mistakes. I am an actor who has worked through decades where going to the movies was an important ritual in the weekend, an illusory but important rite. The halls were like a temple. The traumas of Covid have remained, people don’t go out, they have bought big televisions and see the films at home ».

Would you like to act in Italy?

«This question makes me think about how old I am, because the directors I would like to work with, De Sica, Rossellini, Fellini, are no longer there. I was one step away from starring in an Antonioni film. But water under the bridge”.

Who is Richard Gere today?

«I have been married to Alejandra for ten years, we have two children aged 3 and 4, she has a 10 year old daughter from a previous marriage and I have a 23 year old son. We are a big family. Yes, I’m a lucky man.”