Richard Tiffany (his mothers maiden name) Gere was born August 31, 1949 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Homer and Doris.  The second of five children, Richard and his siblings, three sisters and a brother, lived the average life on a farm near Syracuse, New York where his father worked as a farmer/insurance salesman. Richard was also a member of the local Boy Scouts.
In high school Richard was part of the school gymnastics team and was a member of his senior classes student council. In his spare time Richard learned to play the piano, guitar, trumpet and banjo in addition to composing musical scores for his schools theatrical productions. Richard also played the trumpet at local weddings and bar mitzvahs.

After graduating in 1967 Richard went on to attend the University of Massachusetts as a philosophy major, but decidedly dropped out after his sophomore year to pursue a career as an actor.

Luckily it did long take long to reach his goal; he quickly landed a job in summer stock at the Province town Playhouse on Cape Cod where he played the leads in repertory productions of The Great God Brown, Camino Real, The Collection and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead among many other plays. When the season ended he moved on to Seattle, Washington where he performed and composed music for the Seattle Repertory Theater's production of Volpone. Having grown tired of the theater lifestyle, in 1970 Richard returned to the east coast and joined a commune of rock musicians in rural Vermont playing  the keyboard and guitar, but left a few months later having found his fellow musicians "harder to get along with then actors."

Richard moved down to New York City and decided to audition for the lead in the rock opera Soon which he got, but the show closed after a single performance in January 1971. He spent the next two years in London where he made memorable performances in many plays and musicals such as Shakespearean comedy The Taming Of The Shrew and as Danny Zucko in the musical Grease which he continued to call his own when he moved back to NYC in the mid seventies and took over the roll of Danny in the Broadway production.

Richard stayed in New York and continued to act on stage in such plays as Killers Head, Habeas Corpus, and Awake and Sing for the Princeton, New Jerseys McCarter Theater Company.

In 1975 Richard became disillusioned with the theater deciding to move onto motion pictures instead taking a small part as a small time pimp in the film Commissioner. The film received mixed reviews at best, but Richard was so memorable that he was cast as a shell-shocked psychopathic Marine raider in the W.W.II drama Baby Blue Marine in 1976. Richard then took the role of a doped-up hustler in the movie Looking For Mr. Goodbar, with Diane Keaton, based on the Judith Rossnar novel mostly due to the fact that he wanted to work with the films director, Richard Brooks.

Trying to drop the "punk" image, Richard turned down many offers to play the same kind of role choosing instead to play the part of a sensitive inarticulate teenager in the film Bloodbrothers.

One of Richard's most memorable films came in 1978 when he played the part of mill worker on the run from the law in the Academy Award Winning Film Days Of Heaven.

Once again feeling typecast as a social misfit, Richard went on to play a mess sergeant in the film Yanks in 1979. Also that year Richard played the part of a high priced hustler who rents himself out to wealthy women in the notorious film American Gigolo.  After many unsavoring reviews Richard returned to the stage in December 1979 in Bent, playing the part of a homosexual in a Nazi concentration camp. The critics took note with rave reviews and one who noted that Gere was "enormously gifted."

A great and long career was now beginning. In 1982 Richard starred in the romantic film that made many men believe that a man in uniform would come whisk them off like in a fairy tale in An Officer and a Gentleman. With the 1983 remake of Jean Luc Goddards film Breathless, and Francis Ford Coppalas The Cotton Club in 1984 Richard was now a certified movie star and a very reluctant sex symbol for the '80's.

In 1986 Richard stared along with newcomer Kim Basinger, best known for her stunning performance in the Robert Redford film The Natural, as a cop in the New Orleans crime drama No Mercy. In 1987 he played a farmer in danger of losing his farm in the movie Miles From Home. in which you can find a young Helen Hunt. Neither films were very successful.

Richard continued to make movies that were more unmemorable such as Crack Down, Strike Force, King David and Power. People were starting to wonder "What happened to that guy from An Officer and a Gentleman?"
But Richard did not seem to mind basing his energy on helping to found Tibet House, the New York cultural institution devoted to the preservation of Tibetan culture. Richard currently runs The Gere Foundation which promotes awareness of Tibet. Many feel that his devotion to Buddhism and the Dalai Lama has helped soften Richard from the hard narcissistic bad boy he once was.

After taking a brief absence from film Richard returned in 1989 with his gray locks as a psychotic cop in the thriller Internal Affairs. The film started the comeback of a great career.

On March 23, 1990 the movie that gave Richard back his sex symbol status and made a superstar out of his co-star opened. Pretty Woman was the third successful film of 1990 and even garnered Richard a Golden Globe Nomination along with many other awards.

On December 12th, 1991 at 11:30pm in a little chapel on the strip of Las Vegas Richard married his girlfriend of four years Cindy Crawford.

In 1992 Richard once again stared along with Kim Basinger in the film Final Analysis which did not fare well at the box office. Richards next film Sommersby with Jodie Foster was moderately successful and his next films Mr. Jones and Intersection failed miserably.

Also that year Richard stared as a musician stricken with  AIDS in the HBO film And The Band Played On which he and the large ensemble cast received glowing reviews and the film itself received many Emmy nomination.

Unfortunately everything was not going well for Richard, in 1994 he and Cindy separated and eventually divorced not even a year after People Magazine proclaimed the two as "The Sexiest Couple Alive."

Richard was not lonely for long, in 1995 Richard started dating Carey Lowell, an ex-bond girl who had currently taken over Jill Hennesseys part in Law & Order as Assistant District Attorney.

With First Knight in 1995 Richard played the role of Lancelot a role that was a romantic lead and was the role he needed to get his career back on track. The hits followed with Primal Fear in 1996 as a lawyer defending a man accused of killing  of  the priest who molested him  and Red Corner in 1997 in which he played a man wrongfully imprisoned for  a crime he did not commit. In 1998 he starred with Bruce Willis in The Jackel which was very successful.

On July 30, 1999 the movie so many fans had been waiting for, myself included, opened....Runaway Bride the first movie to reunite Richard and Julia Roberts. The film did extremely well at the box office and was just the first of good things to come Richards way.

At his 50th birthday party Carey announced to Richard that she was pregnant with his first child, her second and on February 6, 2000 Homer James Jigme Gere was born.

In August 2000 a romantic drama titled Autumn In New York opened in which Richard starred along side Winona Ryder as a playboy who finally finds true love with a dying woman.

On October 13th, 2000 Richards next movie Dr.T and The Women with Helen Hunt, Shelley Long, Tara Reid and Kate Hudson, opened.

In 2002 Richard has three movies scheduled to be released starting with, The Mothman Prophecies with Laura Linney (his nemesis in Primal Fear) on January 25, 2002, then Unfaithful with Diane Lane (his love interest in The Cotton Club) and rounding out the year with the musical Chicago with Catherine Zeta Jones and Renee Zellweger on Christmas Day.

Chicago won the best picture Oscar in 2003. Richard then went on to make many other movies while continuing his work with various charities and practicing his Buddhist faith.