Richard Gere

Richard Tiffany Gere (/ɡɪər/ GEER;[1][2] born August 31, 1949) is an American actor. He began in films in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and a starring role in Days of Heaven (1978). He came to prominence with his role in the film American Gigolo (1980), which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol.[3] He has gone on to star in many films, including An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), The Cotton Club (1984), Pretty Woman (1990), Sommersby (1993), Primal Fear (1996), Runaway Bride (1999), I’m Not There (2007), Arbitrage (2012) and Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2016). For portraying Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago (2002), he won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the cast.

Richard Tiffany Gere[4] was born in Philadelphia on August 31, 1949,[5] the eldest son and second child of housewife Doris Ann (née Tiffany; 1924–2016)[4] and NMIC insurance agent Homer George Gere (born 1922).[4] His father had originally intended to become a minister.[6] Gere was raised Methodist[7][8] in Syracuse, New York.[9] His paternal great-grandfather, George Lane Gere (1848–1932), changed the spelling of his surname from “Geer”.[4] One of his ancestors, also named George, was an Englishman who came from Heavitree and settled in the Connecticut Colony in 1638.[4][10] Both of Gere’s parents were Mayflower descendants, and his ancestors include Pilgrims such as John Billington, William Brewster, Francis Eaton, Francis Cooke, Degory Priest, George Soule, and Richard Warren.[4] In 1967, he graduated from North Syracuse Central High School, where he excelled at gymnastics and music and played the trumpet.[6] He attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst on a gymnastics scholarship, majoring in philosophy; after two years, he left and did not graduate.