(Credits: Far Out / Harald Krichel)
Thu 11 September 2025 11:00, UK
Richard Gere has been a fixture of Hollywood for so long that it’s hard to remember a time when he was on the up-and-up.
The handsome star first made a splash in the late 1970s with a knockout supporting role in Looking for Mr Goodbar and then his first foray into lead acting with Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. He started the 1980s with a bang, playing the title role in American Gigolo to great effect. Two years later, he cemented his leading man status with An Officer and a Gentleman.
The debut feature film from Taylor Hackford, who had recently won an Oscar for ‘Best Live Action Short Film’, stars the fashion icon as Zack Mayo, a Naval officer in training. While on his course, he falls in love with a civilian named Debra Winger’s Paula. In true romantic movie fashion, Mayo’s priorities are tested as he must find a balance between his career and his heart.
This was precisely the right move for Gere at this stage of his career. It established him as a name who could carry an original premise and make it a success, opening the door to countless opportunities. The film’s iconic ending, in which Zack carries Paula in his arms out of her workplace and into the sunset, has become part of the vast cultural tapestry of cinematic moments, much like the boombox outside the window or fist in the air freeze-frames. He’d have been a fool to turn this part down, but, as he told the Golden Globes, that’s almost what he did.
“I read the script and my first impression was that it was very sentimental,” he said. “I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to do; this was a time when we were all trying to make much more hard-edged movies. And it seemed somehow soft. But that was just my impression at that time.”
However, his fondness for the director and being familiar with this work impacted his off-the-cuff judgment to lead him to a more constructive approach. “I liked Taylor a lot, I liked the documentaries he made, and I really thought he knew what he was doing,” he recounted. “So we dove in with Doug Day Stewart, the writer, and we spent about two weeks, or maybe it was a month, completely rethinking and rewriting the script. And I think we made it a little tougher.”
Stewart based the screenplay on his own experiences in the Navy; Paula was inspired by a woman he had been in a relationship with at the time, although their story didn’t have the satisfaction of a walking into the sunset moment. Gere helped move the picture away from its sentimental origins and into something a bit truer to reality, which helped out immensely.
The film was a major financial success. On a budget of between $6 to $7million, it generated $190m at the box office. It also netted a few golden statuettes, with Louis Gossett Jr inaugurating a record as the first African-American to win the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar for his hard-to-please Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley. ‘Up Where We Belong’, the love theme performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, also won ‘Best Original Song’. With some messy behind-the-scenes stories circulating the block, the critical recognition is made all the more impressive.
You can’t always tell when a movie is going to be a hit, and Gere was absolutely correct to have his suspicions about An Officer and a Gentleman‘s original draft. Thank the Lord he saw its potential, though, otherwise his career might not have reached the lofty heights that it did.
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