Richard Gere

It was 1979 and the once-wunderkind of Paramount Pictures, Robert Evans, was trying to recapture his former glory days by moving into independent producing. He had bought the rights to a 1977 book by Jim Haskins called “The Cotton Club: A Pictorial and Social History of the Most Famous Symbol of the Jazz Era” for $350,000 from a guy called Charles Child who was a Union Carbide executive.

Forty years have passed since the release of An Officer and a Gentleman in 1982, and everyone remembers the famous scene in which Golden Globe winner (and 4-time nominee) Richard Gere, in his immaculate white military uniform, takes Debra Winger in his arms and carries her out while her factory co-workers cheer wildly. The film, directed by Taylor Hackford and written by Douglas Day Stewart, became an international success, grossing almost $200 million worldwide.

Richard Gere plays small-time New York political wheeler-dealer Norman Oppenheimer in Joseph Cedar’s Norman whose intimate scale belies its protagonist’s star power. It’s casting against type for Gere who assumes the mannerisms of a retiring Jewish fixer, a role – and a challenge – he relished as he tells the HFPA’s Elisabeth Sereda.

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