Hollywood icon and 1980s heart-throb Richard Gere has discussed the dramatic transformation he underwent for his new role.

Oh, Canada premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Friday, directed by Paul Schrader and starring Pretty Woman actor Gere alongside Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi.

The 74-year-old is also known for movies including An Officer and a Gentleman and American Gigolo – his first collaboration with Schrader – which saw him considered a screen heart-throb throughout the 1980s, as well as the 90s.

It was then that he capitalised on his romcom relationship with Pretty Woman co-star Julia Roberts again in Runaway Bride, sending film fans wild once more.

However, Oh, Canada puts Gere in an entirely new light as an aged, terminally ill and tormented documentary filmmaker and writer who agrees to have the final testament of his life filmed by his former students.

The story reveals that Leonard Fife (Gere, and played by Elordi in flashbacks) fled to Canada from the US to avoid the Vietnam War draft.

In the movie, Fife is 81 in the current-day scenes, although he also appears in more recent memories looking more like his usual self.

For the modern moments, Gere’s Fife is reliant on a wheelchair and round-the-clock nursing care as he slowly succumbs to cancer.

The Golden Globe-winning Chicago star is seen looking worlds away from his cinema idol status with thinning hair, lines etched firmly into his face and bruised skin.

Gere described his big transformation as ‘freaky’ at the Cannes press conference for Oh, Canada, given how much it made him look like his late father, Homer, who died aged 100 in March 2023.

‘I wanted to embrace as much as I could of my father,’ he told Metro.co.uk and other press.

‘I do look like my father too – it was kind of freaky when we were going through the process of ageing in the film, how much I saw myself, so many years from now, what I was going to look like then, assuming that I live to be as old as my father.’

‘It’s a very odd thing,’ he added.

Gere also reflected on the odd nature of being an actor, and seeing yourself age on screen.

‘Actors actually see your face and your energy and everything from the time you’re [young]. I was 26 when I started making films. So you see yourself on film, go through your whole life.’

Explaining the surreal nature of being honoured at a film festival, he continued: ‘They have a compilation of my films and it’s a really bizarre experience of seeing your life in front of you in two minutes. I see the characters, but I see myself – I was that person who was pretending to be that character.’

In Oh, Canada, Fife is shown to be an unreliable narrator of his own life due to his confused and failing memory, which is something Gere also remembered of his late father, who was living with him at the time of his death.

‘He was in a wheelchair and he was clearly on his last days, but the way his mind was coming in and out of many different realities and many levels of consciousness – I think that’s what I related to very much in the script.’

Gere is a father of three, sharing oldest son Homer, 24, with ex-wife Carey Lowell, while he also has two young boys, aged five and three, with his third wife, Alejandra Silva. 

Oh, Canada premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 17. A UK release date is yet to be announced.

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