Richard Gere breaks silence on his 20-year ban from the Oscars: 'I didn't take it personally'
Richard Gere is one of the Hollywood greats, but he was once infamously banned fron attending one of the biggest nights on the celebrity calendar, the Oscars, for 20 years.
The star, 76, who is known for films including Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, was banned from the Academy Awards in 1993 for going off script and making controversial comments about Tibet and China while presenting.
Speaking about the ban, the American star told Variety in a new interview: "I didn't take it particularly personally.
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Richard Gere breaks silence on his 20-year ban from the Oscars. GC Images
"I didn't think there were any bad guys in the situation. I do what I do and I certainly don't mean anyone any harm.
"I mean to harm anger. I mean to harm exclusion. I mean to harm human rights abuses, but I try to stay as close to where His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] comes from, that everyone is redeemable, and in the end, everyone has to be redeemed or none of us [are]. So in that sense, I don't take it personally."
Gere's ban was twice as long as the ban Will Smith received for slapping Chris Rock in 2022.
The topic of Gere's speech came up during a chat about the Dalai Lama and a new documentary titleed Wisdom of Happiness on the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and Buddhist leader.
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Gere is pictured at the Academy Awards in 1993, with ex Cindy Crawford. WireImage
In 1993, he attended the Academy Awards with supermodel Cindy Crawford.
The former couple were married from 1991 to 1995.
In the speech that turned political and got him banned, he reportedly said: "If something miraculous, really kind of movie-like, could happen here, where we could all kind of send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping right now in Beijing, that he will take his troops and take the Chinese away from Tibet and allow people to live as free independent people again."
He then returned to the awards in 2013, following the ban.
He is now married to Spanish publicist Alejandra Silva, who he married back in 2018.
In recent years, he's starred in the show The Agency: Central Intelligence and films including The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Longing.
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