When Richard Gere started advocating vocally on behalf of Tibet’s independence, many people dismissed Gere as just another flighty celebrity who would move on to a new “cause” in short time. More than twenty years later, Gere is still a vocal advocate, and his activism is taken seriously by Washington power players.

Gere was in Washington on Monday to lobby Congress for increased support for Tibet. He gave several interviews to various media outlets, but I found this AFP interview the most interesting. Gere, a practicing Buddhist, says that President Obama’s election should be an inspiration to all oppressed people around the world, and that America should be focusing more energy and resources on Tibet and China to bring about a peaceful solution. The AFP has more:

Actor-activist Richard Gere voiced hope on Monday that China could one day have a Tibetan leader much as the United States now has a black president, but said it was crucial to be firm with Beijing.

Gere, a Buddhist, was in Washington to lobby Congress to support Tibet on the eve of the 50th anniversary of China’s crushing of an uprising in which spiritual leader Dalai Lama escaped to India. China has poured troops into Tibet for the sensitive anniversary but Gere said the election of US President Barack Obama should serve as an inspiration for historically oppressed people.

“Thirty years, 20 years ago, who would have thought there could be a black president of the United States? Things change rapidly — and it’s usually in crisis and tragedy that things change the most,” Gere told AFP.

“I can see a time when there may well be a Tibetan-Chinese prime minister or president or whatever form of government there is then. But the words have to be spoken,” he said.

The Dalai Lama says he wants greater freedoms for Tibetans under Chinese rule. Beijing brands him a separatist and criticizes any overseas recognition of the Nobel Peace laureate. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month said human rights concerns would not impede US-China cooperation on fighting the economic crisis and other concerns — remarks that alarmed rights activists.

Gere said on hearing Clinton, “my first thought was to those incredibly courageous human rights, civil rights and constitutional rights Chinese who count on the acknowledgement of the world as a leverage point.”

But Gere, a supporter of Obama and Clinton’s Democratic Party, said he believed Clinton “just misspoke and then has not figured out how to fix it. I hope that’s the case because it’s out of character for her also. It’s not the kind of woman or politician she is.”

Tibet’s government says that more than 87,000 people died in China’s crackdown of the uprising between March and October of 1959 alone. Human rights groups say hundreds more died or remain unaccounted for as Beijing put down another round of protests a year ago on the anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight.

From The AFP Hosted By Google

Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks about China haven’t been given the attention they deserve, and it’s good that Gere talks about it openly. Secretary Clinton basically said that the Chinese-American economic relationship superceded any other disagreements our two countries might have. Gere’s point is subtle, and I think he chided Secretary Clinton in a very classy, diplomatic way. The discussion of human rights should be part of the larger discussion with China, the end.

Richard Gere is shown with Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a press conference in DC yesterday. Thanks to WENN

Richard Gere, 59, was seen horsing around on the beach in St. Barts on Saturday with his eight year-old son, Homer. Gere’s wife, Carey Lowell from Law and Order, was under an umbrella as her husband and son goofed off in the water. Gere and Lowell have been married since 2002.

Also photographed on vacation over the holiday was Jude Law, 36, his ex wife Sadie Frost, and their three children. The happy estranged family was photographed out on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil last week Jude’s and Sadie’s children are son Rafferty, 12, daughter Iris, 8, and son Rudy, 6. The couple was together from 1997 to 2003 and have been the subject of reconciliation rumors as they have a friendly co-parenting relationship.

According to IMDB, both Gere and Law have several films coming out next year.

Photo credit: Bauergriffin

It’s been a while since we’ve done a “Good Celebrity” article. No I don’t blame myself, I blame the celebrities as a whole for doing nothing good or worthwhile for a few weeks. And there’s a chance I forgot about the “Good Celebrity” thing. But it’s mostly their faults, nonetheless.

Richard Gere has gotten our Good Celebrity nomination a couple of times. He was one of those celebrities that was an activist long before it was the trendy thing to do. In fact he used to get teased for it a good deal. Look at how everyone’s following his lead? Yesterday Gere was given the prestigious Marian Anderson Award by the city of Philadelphia in recognition of his charitable, political, and philanthropic work.

Richard Gere, who has donated time and money to the causes for Tibetan independence and HIV/AIDS care, on Monday accepted a prestigious humanitarian award given by the city of Philadelphia. The actor was given the Marian Anderson Award, named after the black American opera singer who achieved international acclaim by the mid-1930s but faced racial segregation at home. Gere, 58, accepted the honor and its $100,000 honorarium at a gala at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

“I’m not worthy of this award in any way whatsoever,” Gere said. “I can’t tell you how this makes me feel. My heart is so wide open.” Gere, a Buddhist, has advocated Tibetan independence from Chinese rule since 1978. He co-founded the Tibet House and is board chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet. He established Healing the Divide, a public charity for improving care for HIV/AIDS patients, and a philanthropic foundation bearing his name helps humanitarian organizations.

[From the Associated Press]

I’m assuming the $100,000 will be donated to one of his charities. Gere has stayed pretty much under the radar lately and been focusing most of his time and attention on various charities, especially Tibet and AIDS. You’ll remember that he got in trouble after kissing actress Shilpa Shetty at an HIV/AIDS awareness summit. It was unfortunate because that debacle completely took the attention away from the organization they were there to promote. Gere eventually apologized, and has continued focusing more on charity than acting lately. Good celebrity! I feel like I should start giving out cookies or something.

Shilpa Shetty wasn’t arrested in India and questioned at the Mumbai airport five months after her controversial forced kisses from Richard Gere on stage at an HIV/AIDS awareness event. Shilpa’s representative has said the reports of her being detained and questioned for that incident, deemed obscene by a court in India and punishable by a fine and up to three months in jail, were false.

They said the whole thing was misconstrued and that she just had to go into a side room to find her paperwork in order to let people in line get through. She wasn’t arrested at all.

It sounds like spin to me, but it could be true:

Yesterday the Press Association reported that the acctress was in tears after being detained at Mumbai Airport by immigration officials on her way to the opening of the Miss Bollywood musical in Berlin.

At the time her Indian spokesman, Dale Bhagwagar, said: “She called me in the middle of the night and was in tears.”

However now Shilpa’s UK spokeswoman Teji Singh has denied those claims.

She said: “Every time Shilpa leaves the country she has to show her paperwork, because of the Richard Gere thing.

“There was absolutely no detention, no arrest whatsoever. She was rummaging through to get her paperwork and just stepped aside to a side room so she wouldn’t block the queues.

“She wasn’t crying. She was bunged up with the flu and she was only in there for eight to 15 minutes.”

[From The Sun]

Yesterday JayBird reported that Richard Gere apologized for that kiss just recently, and that he had the support of the majority of the Indian legal community. Many lawyers and legal experts in India said the charge of obscenity was outrageous and was just done by a judge in Jaipur for publicity.

Shetty is the UK Big Brother contestant who won the contest after Jade Goody used racial epithets against her, causing a huge scandal. It seems there’s a lot of scandals around Shetty, and they’re only increasing her name recognition and career opportunities. She’s not doing anything wrong, though, and hopefully she didn’t get accosted at the airport.

Shilpa Shetty is shown on 2/5/07 at the UK premiere of Music and Lyrics, thanks to PRPhotos.

Remember back in April when Richard Gere caused that HUGE controversy in India after he kissed Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty at an HIV/AIDS awareness summit? Well he’s finally apologized. I’m not saying he should or shouldn’t have, but if he was going to, I would have thought he would have done it a bit sooner than five months later. At first Gere was pretty pissy about the whole thing and refused to apologize, telling Jon Steward, “”There is a very small, right-wing, very conservative political party in India, and they are the moral police in India and they do this kind of thing quite often.” But now, for whatever reason, he’s singing a new tune.

“Richard Gere tried to quell the storm over a public kiss he gave a Bollywood star at an AIDS awareness event, apologizing Friday for any offense. Gere’s embrace and kiss of actress Shilpa Shetty sparked several noisy demonstrations by hard-line Hindu groups and a flurry of legal complaints, which ended with a judge in the northwestern city of Jaipur issuing an arrest warrant for the two stars for violating obscenity laws.

“‘What is most important to me is that my intentions as an HIV/AIDS advocate be made clear, and that my friends in India understand that it has never been, nor could it ever be, my intention to offend you,’ Gere said in statement issued by the Heroes Project, an organization the 57-year-old actor co-founded to combat AIDS in India. ‘If that has happened, of course it is easy for me to offer a sincere apology,’ he said.

“The embrace, in front of about 4,000 truckers, was a failed parody of a move from Gere’s film ‘Shall We Dance,’ and ‘a naive misread of Indian customs,’ he said. Gere said he was confident the issue would be sorted out. ‘I don’t know that anyone has actually gone to jail, it has to go through a process. It goes to a reputable court, and they throw it out,’ he said on the TV show.

[From the Associated Press]

According to Indian law, Gere and Shetty could face up to three months in prison and/or a fine, if found guilty of public obscenity. He’s been a big supporter of various HIV/AIDS organizations in India, along with having a long friendship with the Dalai Lama, who has his headquarters in the Indian city of Dharmasala. It seems like most of the legal community in India are rather embarrassed by the scandal, and think the judge who issued warrants for Gere and Shetty should be censured.

“On Friday, Gere won support from lawyers and legal experts in India, who slammed the Jaipur court ruling. ‘The order is ridiculous. Even if this hugging and kissing was a bit vulgar, it does not amount to obscenity,’ India’s former attorney general Soli Sorabjee told The Associated Press. Sorabjee said the judge should not have issued an arrest warrant without hearing from Gere and Shetty. ‘They are just seeking publicity,’ he said. Another senior lawyer called the order ‘an act of judicial indecency. This is only for cheap publicity and the magistrate and lawyer should be restrained,’ Dushyant Dave told the Times of India newspaper.”

[From the Washington Post]

I try really hard to be respectful of other cultures and customs, even when I don’t understand them. So I don’t want to say that Gere should or shouldn’t have done what he did, or that Indians should have reacted in a certain way. I’m a big “when in Rome” type. But I think that the response from several members of the Indian legal community makes it pretty clear that they think the reaction to this has been a bit backwards. Gere also expressed remorse for the way that the incident has affected Shetty’s reputation and career. It’s pretty clear that he’s generally a good guy (gerbil rights incidents aside) and genuinely cares for the Indian people. I hope they cut him a break, and he keeps his lips to himself from now on.

Picture Note by Jaybird: Here’s a video of the incident. Thanks to Seriously? OMG! WTF.

There’s this confusing article about Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere in today’s MSNBC scoop column, but I think I get the gist of it after reading it several times.

Slyvester Stallone says he doesn’t get along with Richard Gere and had him fired from a film they were working on together in 1974. Gere dripped some food grease on Stallone kind of on purpose, which pissed off Rocky and prompted him to elbow Gere. He then arranged to get Gere dropped from the film. Oh and he also says that Gere probably considers him responsible for starting that crazy gerbil urban legend. He says he’s not, though, but he’s sure to get some much-needed publicity for his latest remake of Rocky by mentioning it:

Did Sylvester Stallone start that bizarre urban myth about Richard Gere and a gerbil?The “Rocky” star says Gere thinks he does. As Stallone tells it, he and Gere had a falling-out on the set of the 1974 flick “The Lords of Flatbush.”

According to Stallone, Gere was supposed to have the role played by Perry King, but he and Gere “never hit it off” and Rocky got so mad at Gere that he elbowed him in the head over a greasy chicken.

“[Gere] would strut around in his oversized motorcycle jacket like he was the baddest knight at the round table,” Stallone told AintItCoolNews.com.

He says that one time during a fight scene things got a little too real, and at another point, things got physical during a lunch when Stallone went into a Toyota to eat lunch.

“I was eating a hotdog and he climbs in with a half a chicken covered in mustard with grease nearly dripping out of the aluminum wrapper,” said Stallone. “I said, ‘That thing is going to drip all over the place.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ I said, ‘If it gets on my pants you’re gonna know about it.’ He proceeds to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on my thigh. I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car. The director had to make a choice: one of us had to go, one of us had to stay.”

Gere’s spokesman wasn’t available for comment, but according to Stallone: “Richard was given his walking papers and to this day seriously dislikes me. He even thinks I’m the individual responsible for the gerbil rumor. Not true, but that’s the rumor.”

[via GossipRocks]

It’s unknown why these guys had to eat in a car on the set of a film, but whatver. All I really heard was Richard Gere gerbil. According to the urban legends expert at About.com, that’s the top rumor that people ask him about when they hear what he does for a living. He says it has all the earmarks of an urban legend and that of course it’s not true. It makes me chuckle self-consciously and think of that South Park episode where the gerbil escaped from Mr. Slave or whatever that guy’s name was. (That episode was terribly wrong on so many levels, and I was really kind of amazed that they would dare make an episode that was so offensive and shocking. It was also funny in a sick way.)

Header image is of a Halloween costume picture found at NatronBomb.com.