Actor Richard Gere celebrated his 75th birthday with a masterclass at the Venice Film Festival. He revealed some behind-the-scenes tidbits about the filming of his famous 1990 film Pretty Woman, directed by Garry Marshall and starring Julia Roberts.

‘Basically a suit and a good haircut’

Fans might love Richard’s character, a wealthy but lonely businessman called Edward Lewis, from Pretty Woman, but the actor thinks it could’ve been much better. When shown the steamy piano scene from the film, the actor blushed, according to Variety, joking that he had ‘no chemistry’ with Julia in the ‘sexy, sexy scene’. Julia plays an escort Edward hires, called Vivian Ward.

He further revealed that the scene was improvised, adding what he felt about his character. Richard said, “This was never in the script. We didn’t know how we would use it later. It ended up being integral to the film. I was playing a character that was almost criminally underwritten. It was basically a suit and a good haircut. We just basically improvised this scene. I just started playing something moody that was about this character’s interior life.”

Richard said the scene brought depth to the plot because Vivian could see Edward in a completely different way. “There was a mysterious yearning and maybe a damaged quality to this guy that she didn’t know.” Pretty Woman was produced on a budget of $14 million and grossed over $460 million worldwide. But the actor says the whole time they were making the movie, they didn’t know if anyone would see this.

Upcoming work

Richard made a big comeback this year with Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada which competed at Cannes Film Festival. The film is their first together since the 1980 film American Gigolo in which he played a terminally ill writer and filmmaker who sits for one final interview. He will soon be seen in The Agency, the American remake of the French spy thriller Le Bureau des Legendes. It will also star Michael Fassbender. Richard is also working on a project with his son.

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