A close encounter with Richard Gere, 1998

‘What is it about Richard Gere?’ the Observer asked in 1998, when a slightly prickly encounter between Hollywood’s ‘most famous Buddhist’ and journalist William Leith seemed to rattle Gere’s zen composure.

Gere was unnerved when Leith attended two group interviews promoting Red Corner, his latest film. ‘“You again,” he said, looking definitely put out. I sat down. He eyed me cagily.’ When it came to their one-to-one, ‘there was a flash of intense discomfort in his eyes. He made a comment accusing me of following him around, which I was.’ Leith was nervous, too, recalling that in one previous interview with Ladies’ Home Journal, when asked about being a ‘sex object’, Gere reportedly ‘took out his johnson’.

There seemed little risk of that; though Gere’s sexual charisma was undeniable, on and off-screen. In his films, he both wore and removed clothes beautifully (‘no awkward moments’), his physicality a crucial part of his acting. ‘Posturing, vulnerable, helplessly aggressive, he looks good having sex.’ At the press junkets Leith attended, Gere seemed to be sealed in a ‘bubble of feline grace’, exuding poise and, above all, control, discussing his work and his faith.

But for all that emollient elegance, Leith felt ‘something is eating him up’. He could not work out what it might be: Gere offered no great – or even small – revelations. Acting was ‘a mysterious process’; he ran to keep fit and hadn’t eaten meat for 25 years. He didn’t want to talk about his youthful drug use (‘this was a long time ago’) and refused to expand on his claim of shyness (‘shy is shy’). He wouldn’t even say if he rented furniture in LA (‘It’s not interesting’). Leith didn’t push it (‘Ask too much and he might go for the johnson’), concluding Gere was a vulnerable man ‘who is uneasy with himself’.

Their nil-nil draw concluded, Gere smiled and shook Leith’s hand ‘as if I were a great friend’. Elegant to the end, ‘the johnson never came out’.