The Longread Friday: A Vintage Richard Gere Interview from the Vaults

The Longread Friday is a weekly series highlighting classic pieces of long-form film journalism from the ’60s through the ’90s.

TITLE: “Mister Richard Gere” Rolling Stone, September 30, 1982

AUTHOR: Richard Price

SUBJECT: The elusive Gere, who by 1982 had grown increasingly frustrated by fame — even as he was riding high on the success of An Officer and a Gentleman.

WHAT MAKES IT SUCH A PAGE-TURNER: “When he opened the door, my first reaction was that he was nude but had somehow managed to airbrush his crotch.” In most celebrity profiles that would be the killer opening lede; in Lush Life author Richard Price’s masterful hands, it’s just another perfectly rendered observation tucked away in the middle. Price’s Rolling Stone cover story was written just as Gere, “the sexual grenade of Hollywood’s sub-star leading men,” was at the exact peak of his pre-Pretty Woman career. But three decades later it still stands as definitive, thanks to the Updikean specificity of the language (“a Belmondo vertical drop,” a “gummy-eyed beefcake act”) and to the unique vantage point of the author, who’d known his subject casually for five years. (Price waits seven perfect paragraphs before quoting a single sentence from Gere. And then lets him go.) It’s a terrific analysis of Gere’s acting style, and an opportunity for younger readers to see Gere re-contextualized as a dreamy, slightly out-there, tightly wound ex-hippie trying to break out of typecasting. Read it here.

Photo credit: Terry O’Neill/Getty Images