Gere himself is permanently banned from entering China, and even working with him could jeopardize anyone’s relationship with the country. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporterthe American gigolo star told a story about a film he was going to make with a Chinese director. “Two weeks before we started filming, he called and said, ‘Sorry, I can’t do it,’” he said. “We had a secret phone conversation on a secure line. If I had worked with this director, he and his family would never have been allowed to leave the country again, and he would never have worked.”

Neither the director nor the film in question are mentioned for obvious reasons, but incidents like these reveal just how connected the worlds of entertainment and politics really are. Gere’s first brush with pro-China censorship came at the 1993 Oscars, where he presented the award for ‘Best Art Direction’. He went off script to call out the Chinese government about their human rights abuses in Tibet, and his career was never the same. “There are definitely films I can’t act in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him,’” he revealed. “I had an episode recently where someone said he couldn’t finance a movie with me because it would upset the Chinese.”

Fittingly for a well-known Buddhist, Gere’s actions appear to have earned him good karma. Since being pushed out of the Hollywood scene, he has taken on increasingly interesting roles and, as a result, received some of the best reviews of his career. Take the one from 2016 Norman, in which, for example, he plays a fixer who becomes involved with the president of Israel, considered by many to be one of his strongest performances.

In the Hollywood reporter In the piece, Gere admitted that he actually liked some elements of being blacklisted. “I didn’t have to wear a tuxedo anymore. That was fine with me,” he said about his alleged Oscar ban after his 1993 speech. When it comes to the subject of big studio roles, he doesn’t have much of a problem with that either. “I’m not interested in playing the wizened Jedi in your tentpole,” he stated firmly. “I was so successful over the last three decades that I can now afford to make these (smaller films).”

In 2024, Gere appeared in two films. One was Desirea remake of an Israeli film in which he starred opposite Diane Kruger, and the other was Oh, Canadaa film by Paul Schrader also starring Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi.

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