Richard Gere thinks the script for “Pretty Woman” left loads to be desired when it got here to his character, millionaire playboy Edward Lewis.
Whereas talking throughout a masterclass on the Venice Movie Pageant on Sunday, the main man joked that his half within the Garry Marshall-directed image was “almost criminally underwritten.”
“It was basically a suit and a good haircut,” he laughed in a clip shared by The Hollywood Reporter’s Chris Gardner.
To assist convey his character to life, Gere revealed how he and Marshall ended up improvising considered one of “Pretty Woman’s” most pivotal scenes: a steamy sequence the place Lewis performs the piano for Julia Roberts’ spirited intercourse employee character, Vivian, earlier than issues get sizzling and heavy between the 2.
After the clip rolled throughout the masterclass, the star smirked and mentioned, “This actor and this actress obviously had no chemistry between them.”
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis by way of Getty Pictures
Gere then shared how the scene was “never in the script” however “ended up being integral to the film.”
“Garry said to me, ‘What do you do late at night in a hotel?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m usually jet lagged, [that] would be the time I’m in a hotel. So I’m up all night and usually there’s a ballroom somewhere or a bar, and I’ll find a piano and I’ll play the piano,’” Gere remembered.
“He said, ‘Well, let’s do something with that.’ So we just basically improvised this scene, and he said, ‘Play something moody.’ I just started playing something moody that was this character’s interior life.”
Unveiling Lewis’ delicate facet let Roberts’ character see him “in a completely different way,” the “Unfaithful” actor defined.
“There was a mysterious yearning and maybe a damaged quality to this guy that she didn’t know.”
Whereas “Pretty Woman” was a smash hit, grossing a reported $463.4 million worldwide, Gere remembered the venture extra modestly.
“We were having fun making this,” he instructed his viewers in Venice. “The whole time we made the movie, we didn’t know if anyone would ever see this.”
