Some love stories end, but the surnames involved never quite stop crossing paths. Three decades after Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere starred in one of the most iconic and widely discussed romances of 1990s Hollywood, it is their children who are bringing those worlds together again.
Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere co-star in The Shards (available on Disney+), Ryan Murphy’s new series based on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel. The unsettling thriller is set in 1980s Los Angeles and follows a group of students at an elite private school as they confront the threat of a serial killer targeting teenagers in the City of Angels. The coming together of Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere’s children has inevitably rekindled interest in a couple who turned every public appearance into a media event.
Both Homer Gere and Kaia Gerber have been asked about their parents’ relationship while promoting the series. Both have confirmed that they had never met in person before and only got to know each other a few days before filming began, though they have spoken about one another with nothing but admiration.
For Kaia, Homer is a “wonderful” person, and working with him has been “lovely.” “He makes me laugh so hard and he’s the greatest scene partner ever,” she told E!.
Homer, meanwhile, recalled that first meeting with a laugh: “From the inside, it’s really normal,” Homer, 26, continued. “We just became friends as coworkers before we started working and she’s become a really close friend.”
The Shards marks the first major leading role for Richard Gere’s eldest son, 26-year-old Homer Gere, who has only been pursuing acting for the past two years. Before trying his luck in Hollywood, he earned a degree in Psychology and Visual Arts from the prestigious Brown University.
As for Kaia Gerber, already one of the highest-paid models of the past decade, she has balanced her runway career with an increasingly prominent acting résumé in film and television, though she is still searching for the role that will firmly establish her as a leading figure of Hollywood’s new generation.
Long before their children were co-stars, it was their parents who captured all the attention. Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford were one of the most powerful couples in 1990s Hollywood. Gere was already an established star who had just cemented his status as a global heartthrob thanks to the success of Pretty Woman, while Crawford was enjoying a meteoric rise on the runways alongside fellow supermodels such as Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington.
According to People magazine, their first encounter took place in 1988 at a barbecue hosted by influential photographer Herb Ritts. The publication reports that Crawford was immediately captivated by the charisma of the An Officer and a Gentleman star. He was 39 years old; she was just 22.
However, it was not until three years later that they made their high-profile debut as a couple at the 1991 Academy Awards, an event still remembered for the spectacular red Versace gown Crawford wore. With its sweetheart neckline and crisscross straps, the dress remains one of the most iconic red-carpet looks of all time.
Just a few months later, the pair said “I do” in a wedding ceremony in Las Vegas. Everything happened so spontaneously that, as Crawford later recalled, Gere proposed on the very same day after finishing a filming session and gathered a group of friends onto a private jet bound for Sin City.
“It wasn’t the wedding I had dreamed of as a little girl,” the model admitted years later. Crawford walked down the aisle in a navy Armani suit and wore a ring hastily fashioned from a piece of aluminum foil.
Their marriage was under the spotlight of the tabloid press, and rumors that their relationship was little more than a publicity arrangement designed to boost their respective careers never really went away. Crawford even found herself publicly refuting speculation that Gere was gay.
“Why? Because he has a lot of gay friends? It’s amazing to me, considering the number of women he’s associated with,” she said at the time in an interview with Rolling Stone. “Plus, we won’t say he’s not gay, because he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay.”
The couple was married for four years, until 1995, but the 17-year age gap between them ultimately took its toll on the relationship. Crawford made an effort to embrace many of her husband’s interests, from baseball to Tibetan Buddhism, yet over time she realized they were at very different stages in life.
“I think part of the problem in our relationship was that we were a lot of other things, but I don’t know if wewere ever friends — like peers, because I was young, and he was Richard Gere — And then, as I started kind of growing up and growing into myself — it’s hard to change the nature of a relationship once you’re already in it,” she reflected years later on a podcast.
The model also acknowledged that the actor taught her how to handle fame, although distance ultimately became another of the marriage’s greatest challenges. “We didn’t spend enough time together,” she said at the time in an interview with People magazine. “And we’re equally responsible for that. We thought it would be okay if we just flew in from Paris to L.A. to get together for a night to see each other. It wasn’t.”
Three years after their split, Cindy Crawford finally had the wedding she had always dreamed of. She married businessman Rande Gerber in the Bahamas. The couple, who have two children, Kaia and Presley (also a model), remain one of the entertainment industry’s most enduring partnerships.
Richard Gere, meanwhile, found love again in 2002 with actress Carey Lowell. Their marriage, which lasted 12 years before ending in 2014, produced a son, Homer. After launching his acting career with a role in Euphoria, Homer is now taking his biggest step yet as the lead of The Shards. The young actor is also set to appear alongside Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone’s upcoming film White Lies.
Gere married for a third time in 2018, tying the knot with Spanish publicist and entrepreneur Alejandra Silva, with whom he has two sons, Alexander and James.
Now, 30 years after their separation, the celebrated actor is witnessing his story with Cindy Crawford gain an unexpected new chapter, this time through the next generation.
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