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MIND THE GAP

Richard Gere, 78, Faces Backlash Over Onscreen Romance With Actress, 28

The actor is married in real life to a woman 33 years his junior.

Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

PublishedJul 17, 2026, 2:58 PM EDT

UpdatedJul 17, 2026, 3:02 PM EDT

Updated Jul 17, 2026, 3:02 PM EDTPublished Jul 17, 2026, 2:58 PM EDT

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Richard Gere’s upcoming movie is sparking controversy due to the nearly 50-year age difference between the Pretty Woman actor and the actress who plays his romantic interest.

Gere, 76, stars opposite Diana Silvers, 28, in the romantic film Asymmetry.

The movie is based on Lisa Halliday’s 2018 novel of the same name, which tells the story of a romance between a 70-year-old author and a young editorial assistant.

After FauxMoi posted behind-the-scenes photos from the set on Instagram, many commenters were furious.

The photos showed gray-haired Gere holding hands with Silvers, touching her hair, and looking deep into her eyes.

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A comment with over 4,600 likes read, “She better be playing his granddaughter.”

Another person commented, “We truly don’t need another film about predatory age gaps,” while a third one added, “We do not need to normalize this.”

“This ‘relationship’ has more years between them than I’ve been alive,” one commenter mused.

Off-screen, Gere has considerable experience with age-gap relationships himself.

Gere is married to Spanish publicist Alejandra Silva, 43, who is 33 years his junior. The pair were family friends when Silva was growing up, and reconnected as adults.

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They married in 2018 and share two children: Alexander, 7, and James, 6. The family resides in Spain.

Gere also has a third son, Homer Gere, 26, with his ex-wife, actress Carey Lowell, 65.

Homer is following in his father’s famous footsteps as an actor. His first major role was in the last season of HBO’s Euphoria in 2026, where he acted in risqué scenes with controversial blond bombshell Sydney Sweeney.

Sweeney is 28, the same age as the elder Gere’s on-screen love interest in Asymmetry.

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In August, Homer will star alongside another Hollywood nepo baby, supermodel Cindy Crawford’s daughter Kaia Gerber, 24, in Ryan Murphy’s erotic drama series The Shards.

Gere and Crawford, 60, were the “it” couple in Hollywood in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s despite their 18-year age difference.

The pair eloped and married in Las Vegas in 1991, but divorced in 1995.

In 2016, Crawford shared some of the issues that led to the divorce, saying, “I think part of the problem in our relationship was that we were a lot of other things, but I don’t know if we were ever friends—like peers, because I was young, and he was Richard Gere.”

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Roosa RahkonenReporter, The Looker

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