Richard Gere is an American actor. He won many accolades including Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. However, his career in Hollywood has gone into a rabbit hole which resulted in him turning to Indie films.
Gere walked the red carpet at the Academy Awards in 1993, there was no way he could have known that the night would have repercussions for his career more than 20 years later. So, what happened that night, that made his career in Hollywood a big question mark?
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Why Richard Gere Is Banned From Attending Oscars?
Richard was invited to present the academy award in 1993 for best art direction. He skipped the scripted pattern to protest China’s occupation of Tibet and its “horrendous, horrendous human rights situation.”
Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins also went off script to speak on behalf of Haitian refugees. The late Gil Cates, the show’s producer, was furious, calling the political speeches at that year’s awards show “distasteful and dishonest” and vowing to ban all three from future Oscars broadcasts.
Gere, now 67, hasn’t made a full-fledged studio movie in nearly a decade. Although, he was once one of the most sought-after leading men of his generation. Since 2008’s Warner Bros./Village Roadshow romance ‘Nights in Rodanthe,‘ his acting in Hollywood was stalled peremptorily.
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Why Richard Gere Is Banned For Life In China?
Richard is a friend of Tibet’s exiled leader, the Dalai Lama. Even after his career was in question, he did not stop speaking out. In 2008, he called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. he continues to support the cause through his two foundations, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet and The Gere Foundation in New York.
This upfront activism eventually had him banned for life from China. Since Hollywood is cozying up ever closer to the authoritarian superpower, studios are careful not to offend the Chinese government. The country, the actor is banned from is the second-biggest box-office market, and because of that producers are scared to cast him in their movies.
“There are definitely movies that I can’t be in because the Chinese will say, ‘Not with him,’ he acknowledges the matter at hand. I recently had an episode where someone said they could not finance a film with me because it would upset the Chinese,” said Gere.
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