Richard Gere is reflecting on what matters after more than five decades in Hollywood. Speaking with Fox News Digital about the documentary “Wisdom of Happiness”, the 77-year-old actor said other people’s opinions no longer carry the weight they once did. “And frankly, I don’t care that much about it right now, what anyone thinks or says,” he said.
Gere connected that change in outlook to a recent conversation with his eldest son, Homer, who is 26. Remembering himself at 25 and 26, the “Pretty Woman” star said he had been “more susceptible to what people said and thought about me.”
Decades of Buddhist practice have shaped Gere’s belief that lasting peace cannot be supplied by fame, possessions or any other external reward. “Happiness and peace [don’t] come from the outside,” he said, describing that capacity as something already present within each person.
He described greed, anger, jealousy and impatience as passing mental states — “dark clouds coming through”. “They come, and they go,” Gere said, explaining that such feelings do not define the underlying mind.
That philosophy has also guided how Gere views the attention and material rewards attached to a career as one of Hollywood’s most recognisable leading men. His comments frame success less as public approval and more as an inward practice of clarity, perspective and peace.